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Library  of 
The  University  of  North  Carolina 


COLLECTION  OF 

NORTH  CAROLINIANA 


ENDOWED  BY 

JOHN  SPRUNT  HILL 
of  the  Class  of  1889 


L\l>  ^VA  [dS^.^ 


UNIVERSITY  OF  N.C.  AT  CHAPEL  HILL 


00032690614 

FOR  USE  ONLY  IN 
THE  NORTH  CAROLINA  COLLECTION 


Form  No.  A-368,  Rev.  8/95 


One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

War  Letters  of 
Lieutenant  Quincy  Sharpe  Mills 


One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

War  Letters  of 

Quincy  Sharpe  Mills 

With  a  Sketch  of  His  Life  and  Ideals — ^A  Study  in 
Americanism  and  Heredity 

By 

James  Luby 


With  Portraits 


G.P.Putnam's  Sons 

l»tewTbrk  ^  London 

JD^t  'B.mckeTbockcrPrBfC 

1923 


Copyright,  1922 

by 
Nannie  S.  Mills 


^^ 


Made  in  the  United  States  of  America 


TO  THE  SOLDIERS  OF  THE  RAINBOW  DIVISION, 
HIS  COMRADES  IN  COURAGE  AND  DEVOTION, 
THIS  BOOK  IS  DEDICATED  BY  THE  PARENTS  OF 

9ne  Hdbo  (3are  Did  lite 


^ 


FOREWORD 

Many  persons  have  contributed  information  and,  some, 
personal  narratives  or  appreciations  to  this  memoir  of  the 
career  of  Quincy  Sharpe  Mills.  To  all,  the  author  offers 
his  heartfelt  thanks.  In  general,  specific  mention  is  made 
of  the  contributors  in  the  appropriate  places. 

In  addition,  thanks  are  due  to  Mr.  Frank  A.  Munsey, 
at  present  the  proprietor  of  The  {Evening)  Sun,  for  his 
kind  permission  to  reprint  editorials  and  other  articles  by 
Quincy  Sharpe  Mills,  and  matter  referring  to  his  career. 


vu 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  >  PAGE 

I. — A  Month  of  Tragic  Waiting  and  its  Climax 
— Tribute  and  Inspiration — Traditions 
OF  AN  American  Southern  Family — The 
Spirit  of  Liberty  in  Old  Days  3 

II. — The  Civil  War  and  its  Aftermath  of  Gloom 
— Tonic  Influences  of  an  ex-Confeder- 
ate Home — A  Picturesque  Boy  and  his 
Quaint  Surroundings— Evolution  of  an 
Ideal 40 

III. — College  Days  at  Chapel  Hill,  N.  C. — An 
Earnest  Student  who  was  "One  of  the 
Boys" — Footing  it  through  the  Blue 
Ridge — Verse  Grave  and  Gay         .         .       67 

IV. — A  Bold  Step  and  its  Success — Ingenuous 
Bohemianism  of  a  Young  Newspaperman 
in  New  York — Development  of  a  Criti- 
cal Mind — Plays,  Politics  and  Philo- 
sophy .110 

V. — Activities  and  Acquaintances  of  a  Star 
Reporter — Roosevelt  and  Mitchel — 
College  Debts  Paid  Off — Conventions 
AND  Vacations — Religious  Stirrings  141 

VI. — Fighting  on  the  Editorial  Front  Line — A 
Young  Apostle  of  Preparedness — Raps 
AT  Roosevelt — Clear  Prevision  of 
America's  Entry  into  the  War       .         .169 


X  Contents 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

VII. — Final  Training  at  Plattsburg  and  a  False 
Start  for  France — Depressing  Condi- 
tions AND  AN  Inadequate  Commission — 
Assignment  to  an  Iowa  Regiment  204 

VIII. — A  Cheerful  Voyage  toward  the  Unknown — 
Soul  of  an  American  Crusader — War- 
time Types  on  an  Atlantic  Liner — In  a 
British  Rest  Camp  ....     230 

IX. — At    Last    in    France — Quaint    and    Grim 
Habitations   in   a    Glittering   Winter 
Landscape — Langres      and      Fort      de 
Peigney — Friendly  French  Relations    .     261 

X. — Billeted  in  a  Village — Intimacies  of 
French  Life  at  St.  Ciergues — A  Lone 
Hand  in  Running  the  Company — Gas 
Masks— Players  in  War — A  Company 
Mascot  .......     301 

XL — Real  War — The  i68th  Goes  into  the 
Trenches  at  Badonviller — Experiences 
under  Fire — Fighting  and  Resting — 
Marvels  of  Civilian  Courage  .     330 

XII. — Peace  of  a  War  Training  School — Climatic 
Paradox  of  Sunny  France — Inspiring 
Visit  to  Domremy — Terrible  Cost  of  a 
Victory  in  Champagne    ....     385 

XIII. — A  Soldier's  Dream — After  the  Champagne 
Defensive,  the  Chateau-Thierry  Drive 
— Fulfillment  of  Fate  and  Supreme 
Sacrifice — ^Asleep  in  France — Tributes    442 

Index 483 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


FACING 
PAGE 


QuiNCY  Sharpe  Mills     ....     Frontispiece 
Lieutenant,  i68th  Regiment,  U.  S.  A. 

Q.  S.  THE  Junior 92 

University  of  North  Carolina,  1905-6. 

Q.  S.  Mills  Interviewing  Theodore  Roosevelt  in 
1912 155 

Lieutenant  Quincy  Sharpe  Mills  .        .        .     456 

October,  1917. 


One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

War  Letters  of 
Lieutenant  Quincy  Sharpe  Mills 


One  WKo  Gave  His  Life 

War  Letters  of 
Lieutenant  Quincy  SHarpe  Mills 

CHAPTER  I 

A  Month  of  Tragic  Waiting  and  its  Climax — Tribute  and  Inspira- 
tion— Traditions  of  an  American  Southern  Family — The  Spirit 
OF  Liberty  in  Old  Days. 

In  the  mid-summer  of  191 8 — that  summer  of  universal 
dread — there  came  weeks  of  anguished  waiting  to  a  small 
family  group  and  of  mournful  expectation  to  a  large  circle 
of  friends.  At  last,  on  September  4,  The  Evening  Sun  of 
New  York  printed  the  following  editorial : 

Quincy  S.  Mills 

The  worst  fears  are  now  confirmed  regarding  the  fate  of 
Lieutenant  Quincy  S.  Mills  of  the  i68th  Infantry.  He  was 
killed  in  battle  near  fipieds,  between  Chateau-Thierry  and 
Fere-en-Tardenois,  on  July  26,  the  date  from  which  he 
was  reported  as  missing  in  the  War  Department  Casualty 
bulletins.  He  was  buried  by  Chaplain  Robb  of  the  i68th 
Infantry,  and  his  resting  place  is  marked  and  known. 

His  was  a  glorious  end.  He  died  not  merely  for  his  country 
but  for  mankind,  for  all  the  things  that  other  men  live  for 
and  will  live  for  during  countless  generations.  In  one  sense 
his  fate  is  only  an  item  in  an  epoch  of  tragedy  and  his  sacrifice 
but  a  mite  in  a  world  of  heroism.     But  to  him  and  his  friends 


4  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

the  tragedy  and  the  sacrifice  were  and  are  immense  because 
they  are  total.  He  gave  all  that  man  can  give  and  those  who 
loved  him  suffer  utter  bereavement  which  throbs  in  their  souls 
with  a  pain  that  no  faith  can  dull  and  no  pride  can  compensate. 

We  single  out  this  instance  from  the  congeries  of  cruelties 
that  is  the  life  of  today  not  because  it  is  exceptional  but 
because  it  is  typical.  And  its  phases  of  pain  and  pride  come 
home  to  us  with  an  intimate  appeal.  Mills  was  an  editorial 
writer  on  The  Evening  Sun  down  to  the  day  when  he  laid  down 
his  pen  and  took  up  the  sword.  He  was  a  man  of  unusual 
qualities  and  promise,  just  ripening  into  the  fulness  of  his 
powers.  He  held  a  serious  attitude  toward  life.  He  was  a 
conscientious  student  of  public  questions.  He  had  high 
standards  of  honor  and  duty  and  an  admirable  gift  of 
expression. 

The  field  of  joumaHsm  held  a  successful  future  for  him, 
or  he  might  have  made  his  way  and  done  good  service  in  poli- 
tics, towards  which  he  had  a  natural  bent.  Prosperity  and 
happiness  seemed  assured  to  him,  when  in  common  with  so 
many  other  young  Americans  he  gave  up  all  for  an  ideal.  Now 
night  has  closed  over  his  hopes  and  his  prospects,  so  far  as  this 
earth  is  concerned;  but  we  cannot  beheve  that  such  a  spirit  is 
altogether  extinguished. 

This  book  is  written  in  the  same  spirit  as  the  above 
article.  Quincy  Sharpe  Mills  was  a  young  American  of 
Southern  birth,  descent  and  tradition.  He  possessed 
remarkable  natural  gifts ;  he  had  an  excellent  training 
for  his  lifework;  he  was  just  gaining  clear  consciousness 
and  full  command  of  his  powers ;  he  had  a  career  of  use- 
fulness and  distinction  before  him  as  certain  as  anything 
can  be  in  life. 

He  was  of  cheerful  temperament  and  courageous  out- 
look; he  expected  to  do  much  work  in  the  world,  to  do 
it  well  and  to  reap  the  reward  in  personal  success.  The 
future  seemed  bright  for  him  in  his  own  eyes  as  well  as  in 
the  estimation  of  his  friends. 


The  Star  of  Sacrifice  5 

But  at  an  early  day  in  the  progress  of  the  Great  War, 
the  star  of  duty  and  sacrifice  rose  on  his  horizon  and  its 
white  gleam  pierced  his  soul.  From  that  time  it  was 
never  obscured  in  his  vision.  No  matter  what  other  light 
dazzled  or  attracted  him,  that  one  purest  ray  wooed  him 
on.  He  foresaw  the  entry  of  America  into  the  struggle  for 
freedom  and  humanity  and  he  devoted  himself  to  a  share 
in  his  country's  battle,  regardless  of  the  cost  in  hopes  or  in 
dreams. 

He  did  not  speak  much  about  it,  he  made  no  great  dis- 
play of  his  purpose;  but  he  was  quietly  resolute  and 
resolutely  practical.  He  entered  at  once  upon  a  course 
of  preparation  for  the  work  that  he  saw  ahead.  When  the 
call  came,  although  well  above  the  obligatory  age,  he  at 
once  volunteered  for  the  fighting  line.  He  toiled  his  way 
into  the  army  with  a  commission ;  he  went  to  France  with 
his  regiment  and  there  won  the  affection  and  respect  of 
his  brother  officers  and  the  hearts  of  his  men ;  he  was  on 
the  verge  of  promotion  when  death  came  to  him  in  battle 
in  the  very  act  of  exposing  himself  for  the  sake  of  others. 
Such  was  the  climax  to  a  career  which  combined  an  ad- 
mirable simplicity  with  exaltation  of  pitch  and  amplitude 
of  tone.  Its  sequel  so  far  as  he  is  concerned  belongs  to 
the  realm  of  faith;  but  all  higher  instinct  forbids  us  to 
doubt  that  his  spirit  rose  out  of  the  storm  of  combat 
through  some  gateway  of  new  and  fair  opportunity.  All 
that  is  left  to  those  who  loved  him,  here  on  earth,  is  a 
treasure  of  memories  and  a  small  legacy  of  the  first  fruits 
of  his  expanding  powers. 

This  volume  is  planned  to  give  definite  form  and  longer 
duration  to  these  memories  and  these  relics.  It  is,  in  the 
first  place,  a  tribute  of  appreciation  and  love.  Many 
hearts,  many  minds  and  many  pens  have  contributed  to  it 
besides  his  own.  Many  who  knew  him  have  united  in  the 
passionate  wish  that  his  figure  should  not  fade  altogether 


6  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

out  of  the  eyes  of  living  men  nor  his  spirit  out  of  their 
recognition . 

But  their  desire  that  he  should  not  be  forgotten  for  his 
own  sake  and  on  his  own  account  is  not  the  sole  impulse 
that  has  prompted  this  compilation.  It  is  believed  that 
in  the  life  of  Mills  as  citizen  and  soldier  the  image  of 
young  American  manhood  as  it  shone  in  the  days  of  crisis 
and  consecration  is  typified.  In  its  earnest  endeavor,  in 
its  bountiful  promise  and  in  its  maimed  and  untimely 
end;  in  its  rich  store  of  human  interests — friendship,  love, 
work,  pleasure,  trial,  hope — and  in  the  generous  and 
willing  sacrifice  of  these  in  response  to  a  noble  sentiment, 
his  all  too  short  life  cannot  fail,  his  friends  believe,  to 
afford  some  inspiration  to  others  in  the  future  to  whom 
the  challenge  of  fate  and  of  duty  may  come  hand  in  hand. 

In  the  very  limitation  of  his  career,  in  the  very  fact 
that  his  supreme  decision  robbed  him  of  the  time  in  which 
to  do  all  the  other  brave  deeds  and  to  pursue  all  the  other 
useful  purposes  of  which  he  was  capable,  some  young  men 
yet  to  Hve  may  find  a  light  cast  upon  their  way.  They 
may  see  how  tragedy  when  illumined  by  high  principle 
can  glorify  thoughts  that  had  hardly  taken  form  and 
works  only  begun  in  outline.  The  lesson  Mills  taught, 
all  unconsciously — for  it  never  occurred  to  him  that  he 
was  doing  anything  unusually  fine;  the  way  of  duty,  es- 
pecially of  public  duty  was  to  him  the  obvious,  the  only 
way — the  lesson  of  his  life  is  that  there  is  a  success  higher 
than  success  itself  and  a  recompense  more  to  be  prized 
than  prosperity  or  happiness. 

How  he  reached  this  higher  achievement  and  earned 
this  better  reward,  it  is  the  purpose  of  the  succeeding 
pages  to  show.  They  will  present  him  to  the  reader  as  he 
was.  In  many  of  them  he  will  speak  for  himself,  especially 
in  his  letters  after  he  entered  the  army.  The  outline  of 
his  family  history  and  the  remembrances  of  associates  of 


Millses  and  Sharpes  7 

his  early  life  and  comrades  of  his  years  of  work  in  the 
newspaper  field  will  show  how  he  came  to  be  what  he  was, 
clear-eyed,  right-minded  and  strong-hearted,  full  of  the 
enjoyment  of  life  and  eager  for  its  prizes  but  willing  to  give 
up  all  for  an  ideal. 

It  will  be  seen  that  he  fully  understood  the  mortal  risk 
that  he  incurred  when  he  chose  active  service  in  the  field. 
There  is  a  final  letter  in  which,  as  one  might  say,  he  seems 
to  feel  the  great  shadow  already  falling  upon  him.  But 
he  faced  the  danger  cheerfully,  even  gaily,  and  his  last 
word  is  a  challenge  to  the  hearts  most  in  unison  with  his 
own  to  share  his  exaltation  because  he  had  done  the  one 
greatest  thing  a  man  can  do  and  shared  in  the  sublimest  im- 
pulse that  has  thrilled  the  civilized  world  in  a  hundred  years. 

There  was  a  blending  of  strains  in  Quincy  Sharpe  Mills 
which  could  not  fail  to  produce  a  character  compacted  of 
strength  and  human  sympathy.  Through  the  family 
history  there  rings  a  note  of  sturdy  romance.  The  record 
is  in  effect  the  history  of  the  Old  North  State.  From  the 
wild  days  of  settlement  down  the  patriarchal  years  of 
slavery,  through  the  desperate  strain  of  civil  war  and  in 
the  cheerless  twilight  of  reconstruction,  the  Millses  and 
the  Sharpes  were  always  vivid  figures  in  the  life  of  their 
day. 

The  Mills  family  came  to  America  from  England  at  a 
very  early  period,  and,  long  before  the  Revolution,  had 
established  a  homestead,  Mills's  Point,  on  Chaptico  Bay, 
four  miles  from  the  town  of  Chaptico,  Maryland.  Un- 
fortunately the  exact  date  of  the  migration  and  the  found- 
ing of  the  house  cannot  be  given.  The  family  records, 
brought  to  North  Carolina  by  Quincy 's  great-great- 
grandfather Charles  Nathaniel  Mills — of  whom  more 
hereafter — and  all  the  early  correspondence  between  the 
Carolinian  and   Maryland  branches  of  the  family  were 


8  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

destroyed  by  fire.  But  the  house  was  built  somewhere 
between  1620  and  1660.  It  is  still  in  existence  and  is 
owned  by  a  distant  relative.  The  locality,  which  is  the 
western  part  of  St.  Mary  County,  itself  the  most  southern 
promontory  of  the  state,  lying  between  the  Potomac  and 
the  Patuxent  rivers,  gives  ample  evidence  in  place  names 
of  the  prevalence  of  the  Millses.  Near  Mills's  Point  are 
Mills's  End  and  Mills's  Run — also  Cook's  Hope — all  homes 
belonging  to  the  family  and  some  ten  miles  south  of  Chap- 
tico  is  Millstown,  a  considerable  village. 

Practically  all  the  settlers  in  this  region  were  English 
Episcopalians  of  High  Church  tendencies.  They  were 
large  slave  owners,  and  planters  on  an  extensive  scale. 
They  developed  and  maintained  that  type  of  patriarchal 
aristocracy  which  was  so  characteristic  of  the  entire 
South  before  the  Civil  War.  Mills's  Point  was  only  forty 
miles  distant  from  Mount  Vernon  and  there  was  an  ac- 
quaintance between  the  owners  which  was  cultivated  by 
frequent  exchange  of  visits. 

The  War  of  the  Revolution  found  Mills's  Point  in  the 
possession  of  Quincy's  great-great-great-grandfather,  John 
Mills,  through  whose  wife,  Elizabeth  Rial,  daughter  of 
Admiral  Rial  of  Marseilles,  France,  a  strain  of  Gallic 
blood  was  introduced  into  the  family.  John  Mills  was 
the  father  of  five  sons,  including  John  Mills,  Jr.,  and 
Quincy's  great-great-grandfather,  Charles  Nathaniel,  who 
was  bom  at  Mills's  Point  on  January  12,  1758.  It  was  an 
incident  of  the  Revolution  in  which  these  two  figured  that 
caused  the  removal  of  a  branch  of  the  family  to  North 
Carolina.  The  elder  John  Mills  served  as  a  captain  under 
Washington  in  the  Continental  army.  He  was  accom- 
panied by  his  son  John  Mills,  Jr.,  who  was  an  ensign  in  the 
regiment  with  his  father.  Together  they  took  part  in  the 
fighting  around  New  York,  and  later  John  Mills,  Jr., 
served  with  the  rank  of  captain  under  General  Nathaniel 


A  Mills  Migration  9 

Greene  in  the  Will-o- the- Wisp  game  which  that  able 
soldier  played  with  Cornwallis  from  January  24,  1781, 
a  week  after  the  battle  of  the  Cowpens,  to  March  15th, 
the  date  of  the  fight  at  Guilford  Court  House.  This 
curious  speed  contest  between  the  opposed  armies  had  its 
course  in  part  through  the  section  of  North  Carolina  lying 
between  the  Catawba  and  Yadkin  rivers. 

The  weather  was  very  bad  throughout  that  wild  March. 
It  rained  almost  continuously,  flooding  all  the  streams,  a 
circumstance  which  was  highly  favorable  to  the  patriotic 
commander's  strategy  though  not  calculated  to  charm  the 
soldiers  or  to  render  the  country  attractive  in  their  eyes. 
Prayerful  thanks  are  still  offered  up  by  the  people  of  that 
country  for  the  fortunate  downpour  which  helped  in  the 
ruin  of  the  British  army,  but  the  men  in  the  ranks  and 
the  company  officers  must  often  have  said  left-handed 
prayers  as  they  squashed  over  the  soggy  roads  while 
rivulets  trickled  down  their  backs.  Yet,  through  the 
dismal  conditions,  one  man  saw  the  possibilities  of  the 
region.  Captain  John  Mills  observed  the  fertility  of  the 
soil  and  noted  the  abundance  of  game.  The  picture 
remained  in  his  mind  as  of  a  good  place  to  live  in,  a  place 
to  develop  and  to  grow  rich  with. 

When  the  war  was  over  and  the  great  prize  of  freedom 
won,  and  he  returned  to  Mills's  Point,  he  told  his  neigh- 
bors about  it.  He  praised  it  so  convincingly  that  the 
curiosity  and  the  enterprise  of  his  younger  brother,  Charles 
Nathaniel  Mills,  were  awakened.  Charles  started  an 
agitation  among  his  friends  which  caused  the  migration 
in  1794  of  ten  or  twelve  families,  including  his  own,  to 
what  is  now  the  southern  part  of  Iredell  County,  North 
Carolina.  Charles  Nathaniel  Mills  took  with  him  his 
wife — also  named  Elizabeth  Rial  and  his  first  cousin, 
whom  he  had  married  on  January  17,  1779 — several  chil- 
dren and  a  number  of  slaves.    Among  the  names  of  fami- 


10  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

lies  accompanying  him  are  found  Turner,  Barber,  Burrus, 
Alexander,  Cook,  Poston  and  Reeves.  All  these  are  extant 
in  Iredell  County,  North  Carolina,  to-day,  among  the 
numerous  descendants  of  the  original  settlers.  An  Epis- 
copal clergyman,  the  Rev.  Hatch  Dent,  a  relative  of  the 
Mills  and  Turner  families,  went  with  the  Mary  landers  to 
their  new  home  and  remained  for  a  year. 

Charles  Nathaniel  Mills  and  his  son  William,  who  was 
born  in  Maryland,  November  7,  1784,  revisited  the  old 
home  in  1799.  They  were  about  to  visit,  also,  their 
distinguished  neighbor  at  Mount  Vernon  when  the  news 
of  Washington's  death  was  brought  to  them.  This  was 
the  last  recorded  pilgrimage  of  the  North  Carolina  branch 
to  the  original  Mills  settlement.  The  first  John  Mills  had 
died  shortly  before  and  Charles  Nathaniel  took  back  to 
Iredell  County  several  slaves  as  his  share  of  the  inheritance. 
The  part}^  of  migrants  which  went  over  from  Maryland 
to  the  hilly  section  of  western  North  Carolina  brought  a 
new  element  into  the  population  of  the  region.  They 
were  all  faithful  Church  of  England  communicants  and 
they  were  the  first  settlers  of  that  persuasion  to  penetrate 
so  far  west,  although  there  was  already  a  considerable 
population.  It  would  seem  that  they  must  have  regarded 
themselves  as  an  oasis  of  orthodoxy  in  a  waste  of  non- 
conformity, for  all  around  and  about  them  to  the  east, 
west,  north  and  south,  stretching  far  down  into  South 
Carolina,  there  was  a  numerous  settlement  of  Scotch- 
Irish  Presbyterians.  Charles  Nathaniel  Mills,  the  leading 
spirit  of  the  expedition,  was,  as  has  been  indicated,  the 
great-great-grandfather  of  QuincySharpe  Mills.  From 
among  the  Scotch-Irish  population  living  all  about  came 
the  latter's  ancestors  on  his  mother's  side. 

It  is  unnecessary  here  to  tell  in  any  detail  the  story  of 
the  Scotch-Irish  immigration  to  America  or  to  descant 
upon  the  type  of  men  and  women  who  took  part  in  it. 


The  Sharpe  Tradition  ii 

Only  so  much  need  be  said  as  will  illustrate  the  influence  of 
the  strain  upon  the  character  and  temperament  of  their 
descendant  who  is  here  commemorated.  Very  full  notes 
on  the  family  history  have  been  furnished  by  Quincy 
Mills's  mother,  Mrs.  Nannie  Sharpe  Mills,  and  the 
matter  which  follows  is  derived  from  these  in  combination 
with  other  sources. 

The  Sharpe  family  to  which  she  belonged  departed  from 
the  north  of  Ireland  among  the  thousands  of  refugees  who 
came  to  America  in  the  early  part  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury in  search  of  liberty  of  conscience,  freedom  from  op- 
pressive taxation  and  release  from  restriction  of  their 
industry.  The  tradition  of  the  Sharpes  down  to  the 
present  day  is  that  they,  Scotch  Covenanters,  were  twice 
driven  from  their  homes  by  religious  persecution.  The 
first  time,  they  moved  from  Ayrshire,  Scotland,  to  Ulster 
on  that  account.  Again,  in  1704,  an  Act  of  Parliament  re- 
quired all  public  officials  in  Ireland  to  take  the  Sacrament 
according  to  the  rites  of  the  Established  Church.  Presby- 
terian magistrates  and  other  public  servants  were  removed 
from  office  in  the  Ulster  counties  which  had  been  '  *  planted ' ' 
with  Scotch  settlers.  Presbyterians  were  disciplined  for 
being  married  by  their  own  ministers.  Presbyterian 
schoolmasters  were  imprisoned  and  the  doors  of  their 
houses  of  worship  nailed  up.  The  raising  of  cattle  for  the 
English  markets  was  first  suppressed  and  then  the  exporta- 
tion of  woolen  goods,  which  had  become  a  great  Ulster 
interest. 

The  resulting  emigration  to  America  began  in  1698, 
when,  it  is  estimated  200,000  people  came  over.  By  the 
time  of  the  Revolution  the  Scotch-Irish  settlers  numbered 
in  the  neighborhood  of  400,000.  Many  states  received 
their  quota,  but  the  group  that  interests  us  here  came  in 
early  in  the  seventeen-hundreds.  Large  numbers  who 
refused  to  take  the  test  oath  imposed  in  1704  landed  at 


12  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

New  Castle,  Delaware,  then  a  part  of  Pennsylvania. 
While  the  bulk  of  the  later  immigrants  went  westward, 
this  earlier  group  passed  into  Maryland  and  formed  a 
fringe  of  settlement  along  the  eastern  coast  of  Chesapeake 
Bay  which  came  to  be  known  as  "The  Cradle  of  American 
Presbyterianism."  The  religious  toleration  of  Lord  Balti- 
more, the  Catholic  governor,  attracted  these  refugees. 
Only  later  when  a  more  bigoted  regime  set  in  did  they  join 
their  brethren  in  the  southward  and  westward  movement. 

Among  these  early  comers  was  Thomas  Sharp,  first  of 
the  name  in  the  American  line.  He  arrived  some  years 
prior  to  1718,  but  the  exact  date  is  unknown.  No  list  of 
the  incomers  was  kept  until  1724;  in  fact  no  accurate  re- 
cord was  ever  made.  He  was  among  those  who,  having 
first  choice,  took  up  the  desirable  lands  near  the  head  of 
Chesapeake  Bay.  He  was  the  great-great-great-grand- 
father of  Quincy  Sharpe  Mills  on  his  mother's  side.  His 
will  which  is  dated  January  9,  1747,  describes  him  as  "of 
Cecil  County  in  the  province  of  Maryland,  Yeoman." 
It  disposes  of  what  must  have  been  a  goodly  estate  at  that 
time.  One  third  of  all  his  movable  estate  is  left  to  his 
wife,  Isabella,  absolutely,  with  a  life  interest  in  one  third 
of  his  real  estate.  Sums  ranging  from  sixty  to  twenty 
pounds,  and  totaling  three  hundred  pounds,  go  to  his  five 
sons,  two  daughters  and  two  sons-in-law.  There  must,  in 
view  of  the  bequest  to  the  widow,  have  been  a  substantial 
residual  estate,  but  no  specific  disposal  is  made  of  it. 

Thomas  Sharp,  Sr.,  must  have  been  a  highly  successful 
yeoman  and  colonist.  His  plantation,  "Sharp's  Industry," 
embraced  640  acres  of  land  near  Fair  Hill,  Cecil  County, 
Maryland;  it  was  in  the  section  where  the  boundary 
between  Pennsylvania  and  Maryland  was  in  bitter  dispute 
until  the  Mason  and  Dixon  line  was  estabHshed  in  1767. 
He  built  on  his  land  a  large  dwelling  of  stone  which  re- 
mained in  existence  until  a  few  years  ago.    There  is  extant 


Prosperity  in  Iredell  13 

sufficient  evidence  of  his  prominence  in  the  community. 
There  being  need  of  a  new  Presbyterian  church  in  or  near 
Cecil  County  in  1720,  the  preHminary  steps  were  taken 
toward  the  organization  of  the  Rock  Church,  one  of  the 
landmarks  of  Colonial  piety.  Sharp  was  active  in  the 
founding  of  it.  A  list  of  Elders  given  in  the  history  of  the 
congregation  by  the  Reverend  J.  H.  Johns,  published  in 
1872,  shows  that  he  was  chosen  Commissioner  June  28, 
1720,  and  later  an  Elder.  The  first  home  of  the  church, 
a  log  building,  was  at  the  Old  Stone  Graveyard  near 
Lewisville,  Pennsylvania.  The  second  church,  of  stone, 
erected  in  1741,  was  at  Sharp's  Graveyard  near  Fair  Hill. 
The  graveyard  was  a  tract  of  land  donated  by  the  Elder 
about  the  time  of  the  founding  of  the  church. 

Thomas  Sharp  died  in  1 749 .  The  successor  to  his  honors 
and  the  bulk  of  his  estate  was  Thomas  Sharp,  Jr.,  who  was 
an  Elder  of  the  Rock  Church  for  more  than  thirty  years. 
His  will,  made  in  October  1785,  like  his  father's,  distributes 
a  healthy  estate  in  land,  cash  and  slaves  among  his  progeny. 
He  was  twice  married  and  had  thirteen  children,  twelve 
of  whom  survived  him.  He  died  November  1 1 ,  1785,  and 
Hes  buried  in  Sharp's  Graveyard.  The  inscription  on  his 
tombstone  is  still  plainly  visible.  His  eldest  son,  William, 
was  the  first  of  the  family  to  settle  in  North  Carolina ;  his 
w411  shows  that  four  other  sons  were  also  living  in  that  state 
at  the  time  of  his  death.  Four  of  these,  William,  Joseph, 
James  and  John,  founded  homes  in  Iredell  County  and  all 
were  Revolutionary  soldiers,  Joseph  serving  through  the 
struggle  with  the  rank  of  captain.  Amos,  the  second  son 
of  Thomas,  Jr.,  and  Mary  McFerren,  his  second  wife, 
seems  to  have  held  a  high  place  in  his  esteem.  He  makes 
special  provision  for  the  boy  to  remain  at  school  for  the 
purpose  of  securing  a  liberal  education.  Amos  was  the 
great-grandfather  of  Quincy  Sharpe  Mills. 

William,  the  eldest  son  and  Quincy 's  great-grand-uncle, 


14  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

is  spoken  of  in  Wheeler's  History  of  North  Carolina  as  "a 
distinguished  patriot  of  the  Revolution  who  early  threw 
into  that  dangerous  and  dubious  conflict,  'his  life,  his 
fortune  and  his  sacred  honor.'  He  was  a  member  from 
Rowan  County  of  two  state  congresses  in  1775,  and  again 
in  1776  when  the  State  Constitution  was  framed."  He 
served  as  aide-de-camp  to  General  Rutherford  in  1776  in 
the  campaign  against  the  Cherokee  Indians;  and  Quincy's 
great-great-grandfather,  William  McKee,  was  also  a 
member  of  this  expedition.  William  Sharpe  became  a 
member  of  the  Continental  Congress  in  1779  and  served 
until  1782.  He  died  in  1818,  leaving  twelve  children. 
Nothing  in  his  career  was  more  noteworthy  than  his  letter 
to  Governor  Alexander  Martin  of  North  Carolina,  by 
which,  under  date  of  Salem,  November  26,  1 78 1,  he  re- 
tired into  private  life.    This  is  what  he  wrote: 

I  beg  leave  through  your  excellency  to  acquaint  the  legis- 
lature with  the  lively  sense  I  entertain  of  the  honor  which  they 
have  been  pleased  to  confer  by  their  electing  me  three  suc- 
cessive years  to  be  one  of  their  representatives  in  Congress. 

Such  repeated  instances  of  the  confidence  of  my  country  is 
very  flattering  and  demands  my  unfeigned  thanks.  Con- 
scious of  my  own  inability,  it  was  with  great  reluctance  and 
with  great  diffidence  that  I  engaged  in  the  arduous  task.  I 
take  the  liberty  to  assure  that  honorable  assembly  that 
although  I  have  not  executed  the  trust  reposed  in  me  according 
to  my  wishes,  yet  I  have  done  it  to  the  utmost  of  my  abilities. 
If  I  have  at  any  time  erred,  I  trust  the  candor  of  my  country 
will  ascribe  it  to  the  true  cause,  and  not  to  any  defection  of 
my  heart. 

The  obligations  I  am  under  to  my  numerous  family,  the 
deranged  condition  of  my  estate,  which  four  years  ago  was  very 
moderate  and  now  much  diminished  by  my  long  application 
to  public  business,  are  among  the  many  reasons  which  induce 
me  to  resign  my  seat  in  Congress.     At  the  first  period  of  this 


Militant  Ancestors  i5 

great  Revolution  I  took  an  active  part.  I  have  now  seen,  and, 
as  far  as  in  my  power,  assisted  my  country  through  her  greatest 
struggle,  and  her  most  critical  situation.  The  prospect  of 
Independence,  peace  and  happiness  to  our  great  republic 
brightens  every  day ;  therefore,  none  can  imagine  that  I  have 
taken  this  step  and  retired  to  private  life  from  any  unworthy 
motive. 

Amos  Sharpe,  born  in  1769  and  therefore  too  young  to 
aid  in  the  struggle  for  independence,  joined  his  four 
brothers  in  Iredell  County  after  the  Revolution.  There, 
in  1797,  he  married  Mary  Andrew,  only  child  of  Hugh 
and  Rebecca  Blair  Andrew.  In  two  important  respects 
he  followed  the  example  of  his  Maryland  forefathers — he 
became  the  father  of  a  large  family,  eight  sons  and  two 
daughters,  and  he  was  for  years  an  Elder  in  the  Presbyter- 
ian church.  He  was  not  unmindful  of  his  military  duty, 
for  he  served  as  major  in  the  home  guard  of  his  section. 
In  the  early  days  this  organization  was  of  vital  importance 
in  the  defence  of  the  frontiers.  He  died  at  his  home,  not 
many  miles  from  Statesville,  on  March  9,  1837.  The 
youngest  of  his  ten  children,  Leander  Quincy  Sharpe,  born 
in  1 816,  was  the  grandfather  of  Quincy  Sharpe  Mills. 

Hugh  Andrew,  bom  in  1754,  was  first  an  Orange  County 
colonist.  He  there  joined  in  the  "Regulator"  uprising 
against  unjust  taxation  by  Governor  Try  on,  and  took  part 
in  May,  1771,  in  the  battle  of  Alamance,  which  might 
really  be  termed  the  first  armed  clash  of  the  Revolution. 
Many  of  the  Regulators  lost  their  lives  in  this  unsuccessful 
stand  against  oppression,  and  the  survivors  escaped  to  the 
frontier  to  elude  Tryon's  vengeance.  Andrew,  in  com- 
pany with  one  of  the  Alamance  leaders,  James  Hunter, 
called  the  "General"  of  the  Regulators,  went  to  Iredell, 
then  part  of  Rowan  County.  Hunter,  a  man  of  means, 
influence  and  ability,  had  been  outlawed  for  his  activities, 
and  after  the  Alamance  affair  a  reward  of  a  thousand 


i6  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

pounds  and  a  thousand  acres  of  land  was  offered  for  his 
delivery,  "dead  or  alive."  He  was  never  taken,  however, 
and  died  forty -four  years  later  as  a  result  of  over-exertion 
in  celebrating  Jackson's  victory  over  the  British  at  New 
Orleans.^  During  the  early  part  of  the  Revolution,  An- 
drew served  one  campaign  with  Captain  Hugh  Hall.  He 
was  then,  with  Hunter,  James  Young  and  four  associates, 
sent  to  Young's  Fort  to  manufacture  gunpowder  for  the 
army.  This  was  a  particularly  dangerous  assignment,  for 
the  Tories  made  every  effort  to  destroy  the  fort  and  the 
men  engaged  in  the  essential  task.  Afterwards,  Andrew 
returned  to  active  service  and  fought  in  the  battle  of  Cow- 
pens.  From  this  field  he  brought  away  a  souvenir  in  the 
shape  of  an  English  gun  barrel  which  was  fashioned  into  a 
poker  for  the  six-foot  fireplace  of  the  hall  of  his  home. 
Hugh  Andrew  was  as  Scotch  in  character  as  in  name;  he 
was  strong-willed,  grimly  humorous,  a  firm  friend,  a  bitter 
foe,  a  faithful  member  of  the  Presbyterian  church  and 
actively  interested  in  the  educational  advancement  of  his 
community.  His  long  and  useful  life  ended  on  his  planta- 
tion north  of  Statesville  on  July  6,  1846,  in  his  ninety- 
second  year. 

The  group  of  Scotch-Irish  immigrants  to  which  Hugh 
Andrew  belonged  came  to  America  some  years  after  the 
arrival  of  the  Sharps.  The  first  comers  having  occupied 
the  available  lands  near  the  coast,  the  succeeding  waves, 
including  the  McKees,  McKnights,  Blairs,  Andrews, 
Simontons,  McHenrys,  Caldwells  and  Waddells,  all  fami- 
lies whose  blood  was  blended  in  Quincy  Mills's  mother, 
had  to  go  further  west  into  Pennsylvania  for  homes.  As 
their  numbers  grew,  they  spread  farther  and  farther,  pass- 
ing southward  along  the  valley  of  Virginia  to  Piedmont 

'  See  The  Life  and  Times  of  James  Hunter,  an  address  delivered  by  Major 
J.  M.  Morehead  on  July  3,  1897,  at  the  Guilford  Battleground  Annual 
Celebration. 


Enter  the  McKees  17 

North  Carolina,  and  on  into  South  CaroHna  and  Georgia. 
First  they  settled  in  Mecklenburg  County,  North  Caro- 
lina, then  they  spread  into  Rowan  and  Iredell,  carrying 
their  racial  strength,  their  religious  bent  and  their  en- 
thusiasm for  freedom  with  them.  Among  their  number 
was  William  McKee,  great-grandfather  of  Mrs.  Mills, 
who  joined  kindred  and  friends  in  what  is  now  Iredell 
County  but  was  then  still,  and  for  long  years  after,  the 
western  frontier  of  the  state. 

The  McKees,  Ulster  Scots  from  the  County  Down,  left 
Ireland  for  America  about  1 735.  They  were  staunch  Pres- 
byterians, and  descendants  of  one  of  the  defenders  of 
Londonderry  who  had  "acquitted  himself  with  great 
gallantry  and  suffered  patiently  the  horrors  of  that  awful 
siege."  The  McKees  established  themselves  in  Lancaster 
County  Pennsylvania,  and  two  of  the  family  took  part  in 
the  ill-fated  Braddock  expedition  of  1755.  Later,  three  of 
the  pioneer  McKee  brothers,  William,  Robert  and  John, 
removed  to  the  Valley  of  Virginia  where  they  prospered 
greatly.  Another  brother,  James  McKee,  great-great- 
grandfather of  Mrs.  Mills,  remained  permanently  in 
Lancaster,  bought  land  there  and  also  acquired  property 
in  the  Tuscarora  Settlement  in  w^estern  Pennsylvania  and 
in  North  Carolina.  At  his  death  his  son  Robert  inherited 
the  Lancaster  estate;  another  son,  John,  received  the  Tus- 
carora land,  and  his  widow,  Margaret  McKee,  with  her 
daughters,  sons-in-law  and  young  son  William  went  down 
to  the  North  Carolina  plantation,  the  deed  to  which  is 
dated  in  1752.  Three  years  after  this  date,  in  1755,  and 
slightly  more  than  two  miles  to  the  west  of  the  McKee 
land,  Fort  Dobbs  was  built  as  a  border  defence  against 
the  Indians. 

Meanwhile  another  wave  of  Scotch-Irish  colonization 
had  rolled  in  by  way  of  Charleston,  South  Carolina,  and 
one  stream  from  it  had  turned  westward  and  northward  to 


1 8  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

the  frontier  in  this  same  Iredell  region,  where  its  people 
mingled  with  their  brethren,  the  pioneers  from  Pennsyl- 
vania and  Maryland.  Naturally,  any  line  of  cleavage 
speedily  disappeared.  All  were  of  one  race,  one  creed  and 
one  type.  Presently  all  the  colonists  were  so  blended  by 
intermarriages  that  kinship  is  almost  universal  among  their 
descendants. 

"For  instance,"  Mrs.  Mills  writes,  "in  the  little 
town  of  Statesville,  in  all  of  Iredell  and  in  parts  of 
the  surrounding  counties,  we  are  related  to  most  of  the 
original  families.  The  dangerous  North  Carolina  coast 
prevented  the  entrance  of  immigration  which  would  have 
diluted  the  Scotch-Irish  strain  and  this  inland  colony 
has  remained  unaltered  in  character.  To-day,  North 
Carolinians  insist  that  they  are  the  real  Americans.  In 
support  of  this  claim,  it  is  worth  mentioning  that  when  the 
United  States  entered  the  Great  War  in  191 7,  and  every 
county  was  required  to  list  all  enemy  aliens  within  its 
boundaries,  not  one  was  found  in  Iredell  and  indeed  hardly 
any  in  the  State." 

Mrs.  Mills  draws  attention  to  a  tribute  to  North  Caro- 
lina by  Senator  John  Sharp  Williams — then  Representa- 
tive— in  the  opening  of  a  political  speech  which  he  made  at 
Statesville,  the  county  seat  of  Iredell,  on  October  13, 1906, 
as  illustrative  of  the  spirit  of  the  state  and  its  people, 
which  spirit  was  one  of  the  great  impelling  forces  with 
which  we  have  to  deal  in  this  book.  Senator  Williams 
said: 

You  had  to  teach  the  doctrine  in  Massachusetts,  in  Virginia, 
in  South  Carolina  and  other  parts  of  the  Union  that  no  class  of 
men  could  be  born  booted  and  spurred  to  ride  over  their  fellow 
men;  but  it  never  had  to  be  taught  in  North  Carolina,  as  you 
always  knew  it.  Before  the  Revolution,  and  during  the  Revo- 
lution and  after  the  Revolution,  the  Old  North  State  has  been 
by  long  odds  the  most  democratic  in  its  life  and  habits — and  I 


A  University  Editorial  19 

am  not  using  the  phrase  in  a  partisan  sense — of  any  State  in  the 
Union. 


"This,"  Mrs.  Mills  comments,  "sounds  rather  in  the 
spread-eagle  vein,  but  anyone  who  is  familiar  with  the 
history  of  the  State  must  recognize  the  essential  truth  of 
it.  The  democratic  spirit  was  due  partly  to  the  character 
of  the  people  and  partly  to  the  fact  that  all  were  of  the 
same  stock  and  on  the  same  level  socially  and  financially." 

It  is  anticipating  the  course  of  the  narrative  by  many 
years,  but  at  this  point  Quincy  Mills  may  best  be  intro- 
duced in  his  own  person  or  rather  through  his  own  pen. 
At  the  time  of  Senator  Williams's  Statesville  speech,  he 
was  editor-in-chief  of  the  Tar  Heel,  the  weekly  newspaper 
published  by  the  students  of  the  University  of  North 
Carolina.  He  published  in  the  issue  of  October  25,  1906, 
an  editorial  upon  the  speech,  and  his  journalistic  instinct  is 
displayed  on  this  early  occasion  in  the  point  which  he  took 
up  for  comment.    Here  is  the  article  in  full : 

Hon.  John  Sharp  Williams,  in  his  recent  speech  at  States- 
ville, made  one  statement  which  we  feel  compelled  to  challenge. 
In  referring  to  the  University  of  Virginia  he  paid  her  a  tribute 
as  being  the  first  state  university  to  open  her  doors  in  the  new 
world.  While  we  cherish  only  the  most  sincere  good  will 
towards  the  University  of  Virginia,  to  whom  we  are  closely 
allied  by  the  bonds  of  name  and  of  purpose,  we  believe  that 
honor  should  be  paid  to  whom  honor  is  due.  It  is  for  that 
reason,  therefore,  that  we  feel  called  upon  to  state  that  the 
doors  of  the  University  of  North  Carolina  were  opened  thirty 
years  before  those  of  the  University  of  Virginia.  On  October 
12,  1792,  the  grounds  of  the  University  were  chosen.  Not  a 
fortnight  ago,  we  celebrated  the  anniversary  of  this  event. 
The  venerable  Davie  poplar  is  standing  still  as  a  montunent  to 
Col.  Davie  and  his  associates.  In  1793,  work  was  begun  on 
the  Old  East  building  and  on  the  laying  off  of  the  campus,  and. 


20  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

in  1795,  the  University  opened  her  doors  for  the  first  time  to 
students.     In  1 825  the  University  of  Virginia  followed  suit. 

Not  only  did  the  University  precede  her  Virginia  sister.  She 
was  preceded  by  only  one  similar  institution  in  America,  the 
University  of  Pennsylvania,  which  sprang  into  existence  one 
year  earlier.  By  this  narrow  margin  did  the  University  of 
North  Carolina  escape  becoming  the  pioneer  of  all  American 
state  universities.  As  it  is,  she  was  practically  so  in  spirit,  as 
standing  for  democracy  and  education,  two  principles  which 
were  to  prove  fundamental  in  the  development  of  our  nation,  in 
the  recognition  of  which  the  colleges  of  a  continent  have 
followed  her  lead. 

It  is  worth  mention  that  if  the  Mississippi  orator  met 
all  his  family  connections  in  Statesville  and  Iredell  County, 
his  right  hand  must  have  been  in  sad  condition  from 
multiplied  shakings.  The  Sharpe  connection,  of  which  his 
name  is  the  evidence,  is  very  numerous  in  that  region. 

It  will  be  noted  that  prior  to  this  digression  we  had 
brought  into  close  neighborhood  and  association  the  two 
main  lines  of  Quincy  Mills's  ancestry.  We  found  that 
they  were  settlers  of  rival  but  not  unfriendly  tendencies  in 
Iredell  County.  We  must  still  pursue  for  a  while  the  story 
of  the  Scotch-Irish  stock  which  constituted  the  maternal 
side.  "The  Scotch-Irish  in  America,"  Mrs.  Mills  remarks 
in  her  notes,  "have  been  too  busy  making  history  to  write 
it."  However,  they  are  not  without  their  chroniclers, 
whether  at  large  or  in  the  North  Carolina  field.  In  the 
North  Carolina  Booklet  for  March,  1905,  we  find  a  spirited 
account  of  them  written  by  the  Rev.  A.  J.  McKelway. 
which  affords  many  of  the  details  herein  presented. 

The  migrants  from  Pennsylvania,  including  William 
McKee,  were  already  experienced  frontiersmen.  They 
recognized  and  settled  on  the  best  lands  and  speedily 
established  cultivation.     The  country  combined  tracts 


Old  Colonial  Days  21 

of  both  forest  and  prairie.  Deer  and  buffalo  were  plenty ; 
so  were  bears  and  there  were  not  a  few  panthers.  The 
Indians  were  friendly,  as  a  rule,  but,  naturally,  precau- 
tions had  to  be  taken  against  their  instability  of  temper. 
The  settlers  came  with  their  wives  and  children  and  goods 
and  chattels  loaded  on  great  wains — the  famous  prairie 
schooners.  They  lived  the  life  and  endured  the  hardships 
of  pioneerdom,  gradually  working  their  way  from  priva- 
tion by  courage  and  industry  to  comfort  and  prosperity, 
ultimately  to  refinement  and  wealth.  The  versatility  of 
the  early  settlers,  men  and  women  alike,  was  as  remarkable 
as  their  thrift  and  perseverance.  Social  and  economic 
organization  soon  replaced  the  primitive  conditions  of  the 
frontier. 

Law  and  order  were  speedily  enforced  by  regular  ma- 
chinery; the  genius  of  the  people  ran  strongly  in  that 
direction.  Yet  something  of  their  combative  instincts 
was  at  work,  too,  for  an  annual  military  muster  was  or- 
dained and  brought  the  men  of  the  community  together 
at  the  chief  centres,  the  county  towns,  as  quickly  as  these 
were  erected.  The  men  were  skillful  with  the  rifle,  and 
rifles  were  manufactured  at  High  Shoals  at  an  early  period, 
Mr.  McKelway  tells  us.  One  of  these  weapons  with  a 
long  barrel,  and  stock  reaching  to  its  muzzle,  was  pre- 
sented, it  seems,  to  General  Washington,  and  was  highly 
prized  by  him. 

Of  course  the  church  was  a  primary  care ;  it  was  the  funda- 
mental institution  of  the  colony,  and  although  the  men 
listened  to  sermons  with  their  rifles  across  their  knees  this 
was  no  bar  to  faithful  church  attendance  by  the  pioneers, 
or  to  long  sermons  by  their  ministers.  One  of  Mills's 
maternal  ancestors,  the  Reverend  James  McKnight,  was 
a  flagrant  offender  in  the  matter  of  long  sermons.  Next 
in  importance  to  the  church  came  the  school.  In  1755, 
Governor  Dobbs  visited  the  then  new  county  of  Rowan, 


22  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

established  in  1753  and  including  in  its  area  the  larger 
part  of  western  North  Carolina  and  Tennessee.  He  wrote 
that ' '  some  Irish  Protestants  had  settled  together  with  fam- 
ilies of  eight  or  ten  children  each  and  had  a  school  teacher  of 
their  own. ' '  The  great  influx  of  Scotch-Irish  and  of  Scotch 
Highlanders  into  North  Carolina  was  largely  due  to  the 
fact  that  for  more  than  thirty  years,  from  1734  to  1765, 
the  three  chief  executives  of  the  state,  Gabriel  Johnston, 
a  Scotchman,  and  Colonel  Matthew  Rowan  and  Major 
Arthur  Dobbs,  Ulster  Scots,  had  used  every  inducement  in 
their  power  to  attract  their  countrymen.  While  on  this 
visit  to  the  new  county  Governor  Dobbs  selected  the  site 
for  a  fort  for  the  protection  of  the  region  and  commis- 
sioned Captain  Hugh  Waddell  to  erect  it.  This  strong- 
hold, named  Fort  Dobbs  for  the  Governor,  was  long  a 
tower  of  refuge  from  the  frequent  attacks  of  the  red  men ; 
and  there  in  1760  its  builder,  Waddell,  with  forty  soldiers 
and  many  refugees,  was  besieged  by  two  parties  of  Indians. 

The  church  building,  wherever  located,  usually  became 
the  nucleus  of  a  town.  Statesville,  for  example,  is  built 
around  the  site  of  the  first  church  founded  in  that  section 
of  Iredell  County,  then,  and  until  1788,  a  part  of  Rowan. 
The  minister  was  often  also  the  teacher  of  his  community. 
The  Reverend  James  Hall,  D.D.,  a  Princeton  man — 
at  this  time  the  college  men  of  Presbyterian  faith  were 
almost  exclusively  alumni  of  this  university — was  Ire- 
dell's first  teacher  of  importance.  In  addition  to  his 
ministerial  labors  he  established  Science  Hall  and  Clio 
Nursery,  schools  of  great  usefulness.  When  the  Revolu- 
tion came  Dr.  Hall  became  the  military  as  well  as  the 
spiritual  leader,  taking  command  as  captain  of  a  company 
of  the  men  of  his  congregation. 

The  Scotch-Irish  of  North  Carolina  were  always  to  the 
fore  in  times  of  need.  They  had  their  share  in  the  French 
and  Indian  War.    As  the  conditions  developed  which  led 


North  Carolina  Grievances  23 

to  the  Revolution,  the  entire  state  was  awake.  County 
committees  were  organized,  and,  in  particular  the  Scotch- 
Irish  population  reached  a  keen  state  of  mental  prepared- 
ness for  the  coming  struggle.  It  is  impossible  to  avoid 
noticing  the  parallel  between  the  causes  which  had  driven 
these  people  from  their  homes  in  Ulster  to  cross  the  ocean 
and  those  which  were  now  operating  to  effect  an  even 
more  radical  severance  of  ties.  Besides  the  general  causes 
of  unrest,  affecting  all  the  thirteen  colonies  alike,  the 
North  Carolina  Presbyterians  had  special  grievances. 

The  name  of  Captain  Hugh  McKnight,  a  great-great- 
great-grandfather  on  the  maternal  side  of  Quincy  Sharpe 
Mills's  ancestry,  was  signed  in  1766  to  a  "Petition  of  His 
Majesty's  dutiful  and  loyal  subjects,  inhabitants  of  Rowan 
County,  to  His  Excellency,  Josiah  Martin,"  asking  that 
Presbyterian  ministers  might  be  permitted  to  perform  the 

Marriage  Ceremony  for  those  of  their  own  congregation. '' 
A  long  list  of  Osbornes,  Brevards,  Davidsons  and  other 
well-known  names  is  also  subjoined.  This  Captain  Hugh 
McKnight  had  received  a  large  grant  of  land  in  Rowan 
County  bordering  on  Mecklenburg.  According  to  the 
North  Carolina  Colonial  Records,  volume  22,  he  served 
in  the  French  and  Indian  War  in  1759  and  1760. 

In  addition  to  the  marriage  grievance,  when  they  de- 
sired to  found  a  university,  the  Queen's  College,  the  King 
refused  a  charter  on  the  specific  ground  of  their  religion .  1 1 
is  not  astonishing  that  when,  on  May  19, 1775,  the  news  of 
the  skirmish  at  Lexington  reached  a  joint  military  muster 
and  county  committee  meeting  which  was  being  held  at 
Charlotte,  the  assemblage  was  fired  by  the  startling  intelli- 
gence. The  next  day,  May  20,  is  annually  celebrated  in 
Charlotte  as  the  anniversary  of  that  much  controverted 
Mecklenburg  Declaration  which  local  tradition  fondly 
holds  to  have  anticipated  the  more  famous  one  of  Phila- 
delphia in  1 776.    The  spirit  of  the  entire  state  flamed  high 


24  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

and  the  general  cry  became,  "The  cause  of  Boston  is  the 
cause  of  all."  The  Mecklenburg  Resolves  which  were 
adopted  on  May  31,  as  is  well  known,  set  forth  that  the 
joint  address  of  the  two  Houses  of  the  British  Parliament 
to  the  King  had  virtually  ' '  annulled  and  vacated  all  civil 
and  military  commissions  granted  by  the  Crown  and  sus- 
pended the  constitutions  of  the  Colonies."  Mecklenburg 
County  is  the  next-door  neighbor  of  Iredell  to  the  south 
and  its  people  were  of  the  same  stock,  with  the  same  ideals. 
The  two  were  settled  by  the  same  wave  of  migration,  and 
a  great  part  of  this  was  from  the  Maryland  ' '  Cradle  of 
Presby  terianism. ' ' 

At  the  beginning  of  the  Revolution,  the  Scotch-Irish, 
it  is  estimated,  numbered  about  400,000  souls,  one-sixth 
or,  if  negro  slaves  be  excluded,  one-fourth  of  the  entire 
population  of  the  thirteen  insurgent  colonies.  In  the  back, 
or  inland,  counties  of  North  Carolina,  as  of  Pennsylvania 
and  Virginia,  they  were  altogether  the  preponderating 
element.  They  were  to  a  man  on  the  side  of  the  colonies 
and  of  independence;  they  put  forward  ail  the  strength 
that  was  in  them  and  they  exercised  a  mighty  influence. 
Everyone  of  old  descent  in  the  western  counties  to-day  has 
ancestors  who  fought  in  the  Continental  armies.  Fgur 
of  Mills's  Revolutionary  forbears  have  already  been 
mentioned:  the  two  captains,  John  Mills,  Sr.,  and  John 
Mills,  Jr.,  on  the  paternal  side  and  two  great-great-grand- 
fathers, Hugh  Andrew  and  William  McKee,  of  his  mother's 
family.  Besides  these  there  were  many  other  Revolution- 
ary soldiers  of  various  degrees  of  kinship  in  both  lines  of 
his  ancestry.  William  McKee  served  first  (as  has  been 
noted  elsewhere)  in  the  campaign  under  General  Ruther- 
ford against  the  Cherokees  in  the  summer  of  1 776.  In  the 
spring  of  that  year  this  tribe  of  Indians,  incited  by  the 
British,  descended  from  the  mountains  in  a  succession  of 
murderous  forays,  and  by  the  28th  of  June  two  hundred 


Revolutionary  Patriots  25 

western  settlers  had  been  slain.  General  Griffith  Ruther- 
ford, military  commander  of  the  district,  collected  two 
thousand  four  hundred  men  of  the  militia  under  his  com- 
mand, and  by  a  swift  movement  into  the  Indian  country 
surprised  the  savages  and  completely  destroyed  their 
power  to  harass  the  frontier.  The  Reverend  James  Hall 
of  Iredell  was  Chaplain  of  the  expedition,  and  in  a  diary 
kept  by  Captain  Charles  Polk,  who  was  at  the  head  of  one 
of  the  companies,  is  this  entry:  "On  September  15,  1776, 
Mr.  Hall  preached  a  sermon. ' '  This  was  probably  the  first 
religious  service  ever  held  in  these  wild  mountain  val- 
leys. Rutherford's  force  started  on  its  march  for  the 
trackless  mountains  on  July  19,  and  after  the  accomplish- 
ment of  their  arduous  task  the  men  were  disbanded  at 
Salisbury  on  October  3.  Afterwards,  McKee  served 
under  General  Davidson  and  Colonel  Locke,  and  refused 
to  accept  any  compensation  for  his  military  service.  His 
country  needed  the  money  more  than  he  did,  he  declared. 
It  was  his  belief  that  a  man  should  no  more  accept  pay  for 
defending  his  country  than  for  protecting  his  family.  This 
disinterested  attitude  has  remained  a  tradition  of  fruit- 
ful pride  among  his  descendants.  While  William  McKee 
was  soldiering  with  the  North  Carolinians  his  older 
brother,  Robert,  served  as  captain  of  a  Pennsylvania 
company,  and  a  first  cousin,  Colonel  William  McKee,  of 
Rockbridge  County,  Virginia,  marched  with  the  Old 
Dominion  troops  from  Point  Pleasant  to  the  surrender  of 
Cornwallis  at  Yorktown. 

The  North  Carolina  patriot  soldiers  appeared  in  many 
parts  of  the  country  where  hard  fighting  was  going  on. 
They  proved  their  mettle  under  Washington  at  Mon- 
mouth, Brandy  wine  and  Germantown;  with  him  they 
suffered  at  Valley  Forge;  to  them  Wayne  assigned  the 
most  difficult  task  in  the  storming  of  Stony  Point.  In 
their  own  region  they  were  prominent  at  Moore's  Creek 


26  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

where  they  defeated  the  Highland  Scotch  Tories  by 
matching  their  rifles  against  the  broadsword.  They  had  a 
share  in  the  victories  of  Ramsour's  Mill  and  Colson's 
Farm,  and  in  the  fiery  resistance  to  the  British  occupation 
of  Charlotte  in  Mecklenburg  County  which  led  Cornwallis 
to  call  the  town  the  ' '  Hornet's  Nest. ' '  The  nickname  was 
adopted  by  the  people  with  great  pride,  and  from  that  day 
to  this  Charlotte  has  always  had  a  military  company 
called  the  Hornet's  Nest  Riflemen.  Of  such  rich  color  is 
the  local  history  and  tradition  of  the  countryside.  The 
Scotch-Irish  volunteers  also  made  up  a  majority  of  the 
Colonial  troops  at  King's  Mountain,  where  some  thirteen 
hundred  of  them  annihilated  a  British  force  of  over  a 
thousand.  By  stubbornly  opposing  Cornwallis's  advance 
they  turned  what  he  expected  to  make  a  conquering  march 
across  the  Carolinas  and  Virginia  into  a  hasty  retreat  to 
Wilmington,  and  under  General  Greene  they  took  part  in 
the  battles  of  Guilford  Court  House  and  Eutaw  Springs. 

After  the  war,  these  men  went  quietly  back  to  their 
farms  or  their  workshops  and  turned  their  energies  to 
improving  their  own  and  their  children's  circumstances 
and  building  up  the  country.  William  McKee  prospered. 
At  his  death  on  February  17,  1820,  he  left  to  his  eight 
children  and  his  wife,  Mary  McHenry  McKee,  large  hold- 
ings of  land  and  other  property.  His  son,  John  Henry 
McKee,  born  March  21 ,  1784,  great-grandfather  of  Quincy 
Mills,  inherited  from  him  the  homestead  near  Statesville. 
This  original  McKee  plantation  still  remains  in  the  family. 
It  is  now  the  property  of  John  McKee  Sharpe,  a  first  cous- 
in once  removed,  as  his  Irish  forbears  would  have  de- 
scribed the  relationship,  of  Quincy  Mills,  that  is  to  say,  a 
first  cousin  of  Mills's  mother. 

John  Henry  McKee,  the  second  proprietor,  according  to 
tradition,  was  an  unusually  silent  man,  of  even  temper  and 
level  head.    He  had  strong  business  ability  and  added  to 


Plantation  Activities  27 

his  inheritance.  On  October  i8,  1821 ,  he  married  his  first 
cousin,  Mary  McKnight,  who  died  in  1836,  leaving  two 
daughters,  Mary  and  Sarah.  Mary,  the  eldest,  was  the 
grandmother  of  Quincy  Mills.  John  McKee's  was  a  peace- 
ful life,  although  two  of  our  six  major  wars  fell  within  his 
time,  the  struggle  of  18 12-15  ^^^  the  Mexican  adventure. 
He  was  Colonel  of  a  home  regiment  during  the  former  war, 
but  North  Carolina  troops  had  small  part  in  either  conflict. 
None  went  to  the  front  in  the  second  war  with  England 
and  but  one  regiment  of  volunteers  was  sent  to  Mexico, 
only  two  companies  of  which  were  actually  engaged  in 
battle. 

In  John  McKee's  period,  down  to  the  Civil  War,  the 
North  Carolina  plantations  raised  vast  quantities  of  food- 
stuffs, but,  in  addition,  had  very  notable  industrial  inter- 
ests. There  was  an  extensive  system  of  home  manufactur- 
ing of  wool,  cotton  and  leather.  Small  quantities  of  silk, 
even,  were  grown  on  some  plantations  and  spun  and  woven 
on  the  spot;  but  this  was  not  usual.  On  each  plantation 
there  were  spinning  houses,  loom  houses  and  sewing  houses, 
still  houses,  shoeshops  and  blacksmith's  shops.  All  were 
kept  humming  with  work.  Everything  actually  needed 
for  home  consumption  was  produced — only  luxuries  were 
imported — and  there  was  a  large  surplus  for  shipment. 
This  was  sent  by  wagon  train  mostly  to  Charleston,  S.  C, 
where  it  was  sold,  and  comforts  and  luxuries  bought  with 
the  proceeds  were  carted  back  to  the  far  inland  homes. 

The  region  remained  isolated  to  a  considerable  extent; 
but  a  high  degree  of  intelligence  and  education  prevailed 
among  the  white  population.  Interest  in  national  affairs 
and  in  the  current  history  of  the  world  was  general  and  keen. 
"My  mother  has  told  me,"  Mrs.  Mills  writes,  "that 
one  of  her  earliest  recollections  (she  was  bom  on  Christ- 
mas day,  1823,  and  lived  until  February  22,  1904)  was  of 
frequent  gatherings  of  the  men  from  homes  near  and 


28  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

far  who  came  to  discuss  politics  and  the  news  of  the  day. 
The  social  side  of  life  thus  became  strongly  developed. 
It  consisted  of  a  constant  round  of  visits  among  relations 
and  friends  spread  out  over  the  land," 

Slavery  had  been  introduced  in  the  eighteenth  century. 
It  had,  in  fact,  been  forced  upon  the  people  by  the  English 
government  against  their  will.  It  had  become,  however, 
a  part  of  the  machinery  of  life ;  it  seemed  essential  to  the 
plantation  owners  and  everyone  was  reconciled  to  it. 
Residents  of  the  section  to-day  hold  as  a  truth  established 
by  tradition  that  the  treatment  of  the  slaves  was  better 
in  North  Carolina  than  in  any  other  part  of  the  South. 
"They  were,  of  course,  well  cared  for  physically  as  valu- 
able property,"  Mrs.  Mills  points  out,  "but,  in  addition, 
their  owners  gave  earnest  thought  to  their  own  responsibil- 
ity for  the  moral  condition  of  these  dependents  not  long 
removed  from  savagery.  One  of  my  mother's  duties  as  a 
young  woman  was  to  assist  in  the  religious  instruction  of 
the  negroes,  and  from  her  I  learned  that  there  was  but  one 
master  of  all  those  known  to  her  who  was  cruel  to  his 
slaves.  In  fact,  grandfather  McKee,  along  with  many 
other  Southerners,  disapproved  of  slavery  on  principle, 
and  the  question  might  have  been  settled  in  a  short  time 
had  not  the  war  been  precipitated." 

With  the  Civil  War  period — still  following  the  Scotch- 
Irish  or  maternal  line  of  ancestry — Quincy  Mills's  grand- 
parents, Leander  Quincy  Sharpe  and  Mary  Emmeline 
McKee,  married  on  March  19,  1845,  and  both  of  Iredell 
County,  now  step  into  this  narrative.  In  his  mother's 
words,  "he  always  seemed  to  be  largely  a  blend  of  these 
two  fine  natures."  He  had  a  remarkable  directness  of 
mind,  a  power  of  going  straight  to  the  kernel  of  a  question. 
This  power,  Mrs.  Mills  believes,  he  derived  especially 
from  her  mother,  who  exhibited  the  same  trait. 


Tragedy  after  the  War  29 

"I  have  a  strong  feelingof  reverence  for  my  mother,  Mary 
McKee,"  writes  Mrs.  Mills,  "for  the  brave  way  in  which 
she  met  her  many  sorrows  and  misfortunes.  Her  early  life 
was  smooth  and  pleasant,  free  from  any  trouble  or  aiLxiety. 
Then,  in  February,  1866,  she  was  left  a  widow,  literally 
without  money,  and  with  three  children  to  support  and 
educate.  She  had  land  in  abundance ;  everyone  had ;  but 
no  money  to  pay  the  taxes  on  it. 

' '  Our  home  was  surrounded  by  a  grove  several  acres  in 
extent,  and  one  of  the  most  vivid  of  my  memories  is  that 
of  being  carried  out  at  night  by  my  nurse  to  see  campfires 
shining  among  the  trees  and  groups  of  soldiers  gathered 
about  them.  They  were  a  part  of  the  force  of  General 
Stoneman  whose  army  raided  our  portion  of  the  State 
after  Lee's  surrender  in  April,  1865.  Everything  of  value 
had  been  hidden  before  their  arrival,  but  few  of  these  hid- 
ing places  escaped  their  vigilance;  they  carried  off  all 
jewelry  and  silverware  found;  even  the  silk  dresses  (the 
few  left  after  four  years  of  war)  of  the  women  were  taken. 
Of  the  foodstuffs  searched  out  from  their  concealment, 
from  preserves  to  meat  and  grain,  the  soldiers  took  what 
they  could  use  and  destroyed  the  remainder.  The  most 
serious  loss  was  that  of  all  stock  from  the  plantations.  The 
farm  animals  had  been  driven  back  into  the  loneliest,  least 
accessible  places  in  the  hope  of  saving  them  from  the 
raiders.  In  nine  cases  out  of  ten  they  were  found  and 
taken  off  by  the  soldiers ;  my  father  and  grandfather  Mc- 
Kee lost  their  all  in  this  line. 

"When  Stoneman's  army  withdrew,  many  of  the  young 
negro  men  left  with  it ;  not  a  few  of  the  black  husbands  and 
fathers,  also,  abandoned  their  families  to  follow  the  sol- 
diers, and  the  greater  number  of  these  adventurers  never 
returned.  My  father  shared  with  his  remaining  darkies 
the  scanty  store  of  grain  and  meat  that  had  not  been  found 
in  the  repeated  searches  of  the  home  and  surrounding 


30  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

premises;  then  they,  too,  departed  to  seek  new  living 
quarters.  They  could  not  believe  their  freedom  real  until 
they  had  proved  it  by  moving,  if  only  from  one  farm  to  the 
next.  There  was  no  money  to  pay  these  freedmen  wages, 
therefore  the  landowners  parceled  out  their  plantations 
into  small  tracts  which  were  farmed  by  the  negroes  'on 
shares,'  and  everybody  went  to  work  with  a  will  to  make 
the  best  of  a  seemingly  hopeless  situation. 

"Northerners  can  never  comprehend  the  poverty,  the 
helplessness  of  the  South  in  the  years  following  the  close 
of  the  War.  Entirely  an  agricultural  country,  it  was  left 
without  farm  animals  to  work  the  land,  without  grain  to 
seed  it,  without  implements  to  till  it,  without  appliances 
or  supplies  of  any  kind.  The  poverty  was  hard,  but  the 
change  in  the  social  life  was  even  more  desolating.  The 
homes  that  had  been  centres  of  enjoyment  and  happiness 
were  silent  and  gloomy.  Nearly  all  mourned  the  loss  of 
sons  in  battle;  all  suffered  from  extreme  privation;  over 
all  hung  like  a  pall  the  terror  of  negro  domination. 

"My  mother  struggled  along  through  these  and  other 
misfortunes.  We  did  not  suffer  any  actual  hunger  though 
many  did.  But  schools  from  the  University  down  were 
broken  up  and  the  education  of  my  generation  was  in 
many  cases  gathered  from  home  instruction  and  from 
reading — if,  indeed,  there  was  leisure  or  inclination  to  read 
in  that  distracted  time.  The  lack  of  mental  food  was  worse 
than  the  lack  of  a  liberal  living.  We  were  mentally  and 
temperamentally  starved.  Sidney  Lanier  put  it  well  when 
he  wrote : '  We  didn't  live ;  we  just  didn't  die. ' 

* '  My  childhood  recollections  throw  light  upon  a  period 
and  phase  of  American  life  that  is  remote  and  incompre- 
hensible to  people  of  the  present  day.  Our  home  during  that 
time,  situated  on  the  eastern  edge  of  the  county  seat,  the 
little  town  of  State  sville,  would  nowadays  be  considered 
a  small  farm.     The  negro  quarters  and  outbuildings  in 


Studies  in  Black  and  White  31 

addition  to  the  home  made  quite  a  community,  and  to  the 
south  about  a  mile  away  was  what  we  called  'the  little 
plantation'  which  was  cultivated  by  negro  laborers  sent 
out  from  the  town  place.  To  the  north,  ten  miles  away, 
was  'the  river  plantation'  managed  by  an  overseer  who 
kept  there  a  sufficient  number  of  slaves  to  carry  on  the 
work  of  a  large  and  productive  farm.  Most  of  the  States- 
ville  people  of  that  day  were  like  ourselves  owners  of  land 
outside  the  town,  therefore  the  whole  population  was  really 
dependent  upon  the  country. 

"A  child's  memories  begin  with  pictures  of  its  surround- 
ings which  are  not  understood  at  the  time,  but  are  inter- 
preted afterwards  by  the  knowledge  and  experience  gained 
from  the  passing  years.  It  is  strange  how  numerous  and 
distinct  are  the  negro  portraits  that  have  remained  per- 
manently engraved  upon  my  mind.  Among  these  is  that 
of  our  Mammy  Leah  who  possessed  all  the  outward  marks 
of  the  traditional  southern  mammy.  She  was  rotund, 
fond  of  children  and  beamingly  good-natured,  but  she  did 
not  measure  up  to  the  accepted  standard  of  loyalty  to  her 
'white  folks.'  Unfortunately  she  could  not  distinguish 
between  mine  and  thine.  Mammy  failed  to  assimilate 
her  share  of  the  moral  instruction  dealt  out  to  the  McKee 
and  Sharpe  darkies,  for  she  did  not  hesitate  to  appropriate 
whatever  appealed  to  her  fancy  from  the  food,  clothing 
and  trinkets  of  her  master's  house.  My  mother  admon- 
ished and  warned  to  no  effect,  so  finally  the  decree  of 
banishment  to  the  river  plantation  fell  upon  our  ebony 
friend;  and,  another  instance  of  the  innocent  suffering 
along  with  the  guilty,  her  husband.  Uncle  Jesse,  shared 
her  punishment.  This  was  not  compulsory ;  the  choice  was 
given  him  of  going  or  staying,  and  his  reply  was,  'I  go 
with  Leah.'  It  was  a  sore  inconvenience,  and  a  financial 
loss  as  well,  to  give  up  his  services  in  town,  for  he  was  an 
expert  shoemaker  and  repairer  and  when  not  busy  with 


32  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

home  work  was  earning  money  by  making  footwear  for  the 
slaves  of  the  townspeople  about  us.  But  my  father  and 
mother  were  too  humane  to  break  family  ties,  therefore 
Uncle  Jesse  accompanied  his  wife  into  an  exile  as  hateful 
to  the  excitement-loving,  social  negro  race  as  was  Siberia 
to  Russia's  political  offenders.  There  was  no  ill-treatment 
up  on  the  river,  for  the  overseer  there  was  a  just  and  pa- 
tient man,  but  the  loneliness  of  the  widely  separated 
plantations  was  unendurable  after  town  life. 

"  I,  at  that  time  quite  a  small  child,  knew  nothing  of  the 
impending  tragedy  and  its  cause,  but  one  morning  sounds 
of  distress  in  the  negro  quarter  drew  me  out  of  the  house  to 
the  yard  to  find  Mammy  Leah  and  Uncle  Jesse  seated  on 
chairs  in  a  big  farm  wagon,  she  with  her  apron  thrown  over 
her  head  and  her  lamentations  ringing  over  the  whole 
place.  My  sympathy  was  so  aroused  by  her  weeping  that 
my  wails  were  added  to  hers  without  any  understanding 
on  my  part  of  what  it  was  all  about.  Uncle  Jesse,  white- 
haired  and  with  a  fringe  of  white  whiskers  around  his  face 
in  Uncle  Ned  style,  sat  perfectly  quiet,  his  hands  clasped 
on  top  of  his  staff.  Thus  Mammy  passed  out  of  our  life 
forever,  for  she  died  not  long  thereafter.  Uncle  Jesse 
lived  on  for  years,  often  coming  to  my  mother  for  help 
after  freedom  came  to  him.  Emancipation  brought  priva- 
tion and  suffering  to  the  aged  or  helpless  among  the 
negroes  unless  they  were  looked  after  by  their  former 
owners,  and  such  was  the  universal  practice  in  our  section. 
This  old  shoemaker  was  always  serene  and  silent;  the 
little  he  had  to  say  was  delivered  in  a  fine,  thin,  high- 
pitched  voice,  the  like  of  which  I  never  heard  from  any 
other  darky's  throat.  As  a  race  they  are  remarkable  for 
full,  deep  voices  that  fall  musically  upon  the  ear. 

"William  and  Sam,  brothers  of  about  ten  and  twelve, 
and  two  small  black  limbs  of  Satan,  reappear  to  my  mind's 
eye  as  perpetually  turning  cartwheels  on  the  grass  in  the 


Fond  Recollections  33 

rear  of  our  home  for  the  entertainment  of  the  white  chil- 
dren and  a  crowd  of  their  own  dusky  followers.  The  only- 
work  assigned  to  these  two  boys,  so  far  as  I  ever  knew,  was 
the  task  of  waving  the  beautiful  peacock  feather  brushes, 
one  at  each  end  of  the  long  dining  table,  at  breakfast, 
dinner  and  supper.  With  them,  to  be  still  was  to  be  sleepy, 
and  they  could  never  perform  this  arduous  dining  room 
duty  without  nodding  and  finally  falling  asleep ;  the  pea- 
cock feathers  would  wave  slowly  and  yet  more  slowly 
until  at  last  the  tips  would  descend  upon  the  dishes.  Then 
my  father  would  turn  to  the  black  head  nearest  him  and 
give  it  a  rap  with  the  carving  knife  handle  that  would 
bring  the  brothers  both  to  the  alert  for  a  time.  My  food 
was  really  little  pleasure  to  me  those  days,  for  I  was  all 
horrified  expectation  of  those  never  failing  nods  and 
equally  certain  raps.  Perhaps  the  boys  drew  lots  as 
to  which  should  take  the  post  of  danger  next  their 
master. 

"The  dearest  of  these  dark  portraits  remaining  in  my 
mind  is  that  of  my  nurse  Caroline,  a  young  woman  of 
twenty-two  or  twenty-three  with  more  gentle  quietness 
and  refinement  in  her  nature  than  any  other  member  of 
her  race  known  to  me  except  her  mother,  Elizabeth,  who 
was  the  house  seamstress.  I  was  almost  constantly  with 
these  two,  and  when  older  I  realized  that  they  had  been 
selected  as  house  servants  because  of  their  reliable  qualities. 
My  nurse,  her  mother.  Uncle  Jesse  and  my  grandfather 
McKee'scook,  Isabella,  always  called  Aunt  Ibby,  were  of  a 
different  type  from  the  other  darkies.  Their  coloring, 
thin  features  and  bearing  were  more  Indianlike  than 
African,  and  they  possessed  dignity  and  reserve.  Aunt 
Ibby  was  a  wonderfully  fine  cook,  and  the  delicious  food 
that  was  served  from  the  kitchen  of  the  old  McKee  home- 
stead was  famous  far  and  near.  The  taste  and  odor 
of  the  waffles  she  made  every  morning  for  my  grand- 


34  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

father's  breakfast  have  remained  a  deHghtful  gastronomic 
memory. 

"A  pleasure  Caroline  and  I  shared  together  was  watch- 
ing my  grown-up  sister  and  her  friends  gathered  around  the 
piano  in  the  parlor,  and  listening  to  their  singing.  My 
observations  began  in  wartime,  for  I  was  born  in  1859, 
but  there  seems  to  have  been  no  lack  of  beaux  in  those 
merry  crowds;  the  young  men  must  have  been  soldiers 
home  on  furlough,  for  every  man  of  fighting  age  was  then 
in  the  Confederate  army.  Of  course  the  war  songs, 
Maryland  My  Maryland,  Dixie  and  others  were  the  prime 
favorites,  though  songs  from  the  old  operas  were  not 
neglected,  and  of  these.  Hear  Me,  Norma,  thrilled  us 
most. 

' '  My  mother  knew  the  hardships  of  this  old  life  that  to  a 
a  child  appeared  altogether  happy  and  desirable.  She  was 
such  a  busy  woman  that  she  had  to  deny  herself,  to  a  large 
degree,  the  companionship  of  her  children.  Every  woman 
at  the  head  of  a  Southern  household  in  those  days  had  an 
overflowing  measure  of  responsibility,  but  her  duties  were 
probably  more  exacting  and  numerous  than  those  of  any 
other  wife  and  mother  in  our  small  town.  This  was  due  to 
the  fact  that  my  father's  profession  and  his  political  ac- 
tivities kept  him  away  from  home  much  of  the  time,  and 
in  the  years  when  he  was  a  member  of  the  State  House  or 
Senate  he  was  absent  during  the  sessions  of  the  Legislature. 
In  addition  to  the  oversight  of  her  five  children  and  the 
home,  always  filled  with  visitors  from  the  large  circle  of 
relatives  and  friends,  the  direction  of  the  work  on  the 
nearby  plantation  fell  upon  her  shoulders.  But  her  hard- 
est problem  was  the  management  of  the  negroes.  I  have 
heard  her  say,  in  speaking  of  the  transition  from  too  many 
servants  to  none  at  all,  that  she  was  emancipated  along 
with  her  slaves.  Her  position  was  rendered  more  trying 
by  an  unusually  sensitive  conscience. 


Leander  Quincy  Sharpe  35 

"My  father,  Leander  Quincy  Sharpe,  for  whom  my  boy 
was  named,  must  have  been  one  of  the  most  lovable  of 
men.  I  was  little  more  than  six  years  of  age  when  he  died 
in  1866,  so  my  memories  of  him  are  vague.  But  wherever 
I  went  as  a  child  or  as  a  young  woman  people  talked  to 
me  about  my  father,  of  his  ready  wit  as  a  speaker,  of  his 
gayety,  unfailing  kindness  and  cheerfulness,  of  his  uni- 
versal popularity.  His  cheerfulness  of  spirit  was  wonderful 
in  view  of  the  fact  that  he  was  never  strong  and  that  he 
suffered  severely  for  several  years  before  his  death.  A 
part  of  his  education  was  received  at  Davidson  College, 
not  far  from  Statesville,  one  of  the  first  institutions  of 
learning  to  be  founded  near  us,  at  which,  I  may  remark, 
President  Wilson  received  two  years  of  his  college  train- 
ing. It  has  always  had  a  large  attendance  from  among  the 
Presbyterian  descendants  of  the  Scotch-Irish  in  the  South. 
After  leaving  college  my  father  entered  the  law  school  of 
Richmchid  M.  Pearson,  afterwards  Chief  Justice  of  the 
North  Carolina  Supreme  Court,  at  Richmond  Hill,, 
Yadkin  County;  when  his  law  course  was  completed  he 
entered  upon  the  practice  of  his  profession  in  Statesville, 
and  he  was  successful  from  the  first.  He  was  a  member  of 
the  State  House  of  Representatives  in  1856,  1864  and 
1865,  and  of  the  State  Senate  from  i860  to  1862.  A  short 
time  before  his  death  he  had  been  elected  solicitor  for  the 
Iredell  District  which  at  that  time  included  the  entire 
western  part  of  the  State.  He  was  opposed  to  secession 
and  used  every  effort  to  prevent  it.  In  Reconstruction  in 
North  Carolina  by  J.  G.  de  Roulhac  Hamilton,  of  Colirm- 
bia  University,  a  work  published  in  Raleigh,  L.  Q.  Sharpe 
is  mentioned  on  page  19  as  one  of  a  group  who  opposed  the 
bill  passed  January  30,  1861,  which  provided  for  submit- 
ting to  the  people  the  question  of  calling  a  convention  to 
consider  Federal  relations.  He  and  his  supporters,  four 
in  number,  contested  every  step  in  the  progress  of  the 


36  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

measure  and  gave  the  secessionists  infinite  trouble.  As  a 
result  of  their  determined  fight  against  secession  my  father 
and  his  associates  in  the  contest,  when  on  the  way  to  their 
homes  at  the  close  of  the  session,  were  almost  mobbed  at 
Salisbury,  N.  C,  by  a  number  of  hot-headed  advocates  of 
the  measure.  This  was  the  only  evidence  of  public  ill- 
will  my  father  ever  experienced,  as  his  attractive  person- 
ality made  him  a  favorite  with  all  parties, 

"The  people  of  North  Carolina  withdrew  most  reluc- 
tantly from  '  the  Union  of  States  that  had  been  in  such  large 
part  constructed  by  the  heroism  and  wisdom  of  their  own 
fathers.'  But  having  finally  cast  in  her  lot  with  the  Con- 
federacy the  State  supported  with  the  last  oimce  of  her 
strength  the  cause  she  was  so  slow  to  join.  The  records  of 
the  War  Department  at  Washington  show  that  North 
Carolina  furnished  more  troops — one-fourth  of  the  entire 
force  raised  by  the  Confederate  government  during  the 
war  came  from  our  State — and  lost  more  men  in  killed 
and  wounded  than  any  other  Southern  state.  Her  total 
contribution  was  125,000  men.  Again,  as  in  the  days  of 
'76,  her  dangerous  seacoast  played  a  part  in  history,  for 
the  Northern  fleet  found  it  impossible  to  seal  her  ports. 
Swift  and  daring  blockade  runners  brought  in  from  Nassau 
and  Bermuda  clothing  and  equipment  not  only  for  her  own 
soldiers  but  for  the  troops  of  other  states.  But  for  this  help 
the  unequal  struggle  between  the  North  and  the  South 
would  have  ended  long  before  April,  1865. 

"The  best  illustration  of  my  father's  nature  I  can  give 
is  to  tell  this  story  of  his  devotion  to  one  of  his  friends. 
While  he  was  attending  court  at  the  county  seat  of  an 
adjoining  county,  one  of  the  other  lawyers  was  stricken 
with  smallpox.  Such  was  the  dread  of  the  scourge  at  that 
time  that  the  sick  man  was  literally  deserted — left  alone 
in  the  hotel  where  he  was  stopping.  My  father  went  to 
him  at  once  and  took  charge  of  the  case  imtil  an  immune 


Scotch- Irish  Heritage  2>7 

nurse  could  be  procured.  Then  he  went  home  and  isolated 
himself  with  one  servant;  fortunately,  however,  there 
were  no  serious  results  from  the  risk  so  generously  taken. 

"He  contracted  typhoid  fever  in  Raleigh  while  serving 
as  a  member  of  the  Legislature  in  1866,  and  returned  to 
our  home  in  Statesville  to  die  of  it  there  on  February  13 
of  that  year.  Typhoid  was  until  recent  years  a  terrible 
affliction  to  the  South.  On  February  26,  thirteen  days 
after  my  father's  death,  his  eldest  child,  a  young  woman  of 
nineteen,  died  of  it,  and  in  1890  a  younger  sister,  most 
beloved,  contracted  it  in  Richmond,  Virginia,  during  an 
epidemic  and  succumbed.  Quincy  almost  died  of  it  some 
years  later. 

"Quincy  inherited  my  father's  cheerful  nature  and  his 
ability  to  make  friends.  My  mother  and  I  long  hoped 
that  he  might  take  up  the  study  of  the  law,  and  so,  as  I 
might  say,  round  out  his  grandfather's  unfinished  career. 
But  Quincy  had  no  gifts  as  a  speaker,  and  realized  the 
deficiency.  Therefore  he  wisely  determined  to  make  his 
way  with  his  pen.  He  intended,  however,  to  enter  politics, 
for  it  was  his  belief  that  political  power,  honestly  gained 
and  rightly  used,  was  the  one  thing  really  worth  while." 

Mills  would  have  been  a  potent  influence  for  good  in 
public  life  had  he  lived  to  enter  it  because  he  was  at  once 
intelligent  and  incorruptible.  He  would  have  advocated 
wise  and  honest  policies  and  could  not  have  been  swerved 
from  them  by  any  selfish  consideration.  He  had  a  very 
keen  enjoyment  of  the  good  things  of  life,  but  they  were  of 
no  moment  to  him  as  compared  with  cravings  of  the  spirit. 

In  the  account  given  above  of  the  Scotch-Irish  branch 
of  his  ancestry  the  origin  of  many  of  his  most  prominent 
traits  of  character  may  be  found.  They  were  clear  headed, 
independent,  industrious  people;  they  had  a  faculty  of 
concentration  on  an  idea,  an  intensity  in  their  make-up 


38  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

which  tended  toward  religious  fervor,  or  even  fanaticism. 
This  inheritance  in  him  ran  rather  to  a  spirit  of  public 
service  and  to  patriotic  enthusiasm.  The  same  qualities 
which  made  them  exiles  because  of  sectarian  oppression, 
and  revolutionists  and  separatists  in  the  days  of  the 
Revolution  made  him  a  fervent  advocate  of  war  with 
Germany  and  one  of  the  first  volunteers  for  active  duty 
in  the  field.  The  addiction  to  work  and  thrift,  the  produc- 
tive power  of  the  North  Carolina  settlers,  were  perpetu- 
ated in  his  earnest  and  fruitful  labor  in  his  chosen  field 
of  journalism.  Besides  the  inheritance  of  blood,  the 
biological  influence,  there  was  the  effect  of  local  and  family 
tradition  upon  the  development  of  his  mind  and  character. 
Of  this  influence  his  mother  speaks  with  full  knowledge 
and  correct  understanding. 

"Southerners,"  writes  Mrs.  Mills,  "live  much  more  in 
the  past  than  do  the  people,  generally  speaking,  of  the 
North.  To  them  the  war  of  the  Revolution  seems  near 
and  they  reckon  time  by  the  Civil  War ;  this  or  that  hap- 
pening was  so  many  years  before  or  after  'The  War,' 
they  still  say.  Like  all  old  settlements,  our  community 
of  Iredell  County  is  rich  in  tradition  and  many  are  the 
stories  that  have  come  down  to  us  from  the  early  days. 

"During  Quincy's  boyhood  and  during  his  college  vaca- 
tions, I  sometimes  called  his  attention  to  this  store  of 
historic  and  romantic  tradition,  which  awaited  some  pen 
to  give  it  permanent  form.  Had  he  lived,  the  time  might 
have  come  when  he  would  have  turned  to  this  fascinating 
task.  But,  of  course,  the  work  he  had  to  do  was  more 
pressing  and  more  important. 

"The  Scotch-Irish,  of  whom  he  was  one-half  the  des- 
cendant, have  been  called  the  Puritans  of  the  South;  but 
our  people  possessed,  as  well  as  their  rigid  principles,  a 
rich  humor  and  wide  tolerance  quite  foreign  to  the  typical 
Puritan  nature  and  training.     While  devotion  to  their 


Liberal  Puritans  39 

church  was  the  rule,  the  number  of  men  of  our  stock  who 
could  never  tie  themselves  down  narrowly  to  a  creed  was 
and  is  remarkably  large.  They  could  not  love  their  Lord 
by  'rule  and  line,'  though  their  lives  bore  testimony  to 
their  belief  in  Him." 


CHAPTER  II 

The  Civil  War  and  Its  Aftermath  of  Gloom — Tonic  Influences  of 
AN  ex-Confederate  Home — A  Picturesque  Boy  and  His  Quaint 
Surroundings — Evolution  of  an  Ideal. 

We  must  now  return  to  the  fortunes  of  the  Mills  family 
which  we  left  prosperous  pioneers  of  English  Episcopalian 
antecedents,  flourishing  in  the  midst  of  the  Scotch-Irish 
Sharpes  and  McKees  in  the  Statesville  region  of  Iredell 
County  and  naturally  living  much  the  same  life  as  their 
neighbors,  socially  and  economically.  Charles  Nathaniel, 
the  leader  of  the  exodus  from  Maryland,  lived  until  Decem- 
ber 17,  1843,  when  he  was  nearly  eighty -six  years  old.  His 
wife  Elizabeth  Rial,  who  was  born  in  1763,  survived  him 
until  August  22,  1854,  when  she  died  at  ninety-one.  Next 
in  the  line  of  Quincy  Mills's  ancestry  was  their  son,  Wil- 
liam, born  in  Maryland,  November  7,  1784,  who  has  al- 
ready been  mentioned  as  accompanying  his  father  on  a 
visit  to  Mills's  Point.  He  married  Elizabeth  Dearman  on 
Februarys,  1820  and  lived  to  the  age  of  eighty-seven  years, 
dying  August  26,  1871.  His  widow  lived  ten  years  longer, 
reaching  the  age  of  eighty -one. 

In  1 861,  at  the  beginning  of  the  Civil  War,  William  Mills 
was  living  on  his  plantation  a  few  miles  south  of  States- 
ville. Like  John  Mills  of  the  Revolutionary  War,  he  was 
the  father  of  five  sons  as  well  as  four  daughters — great 
ages  and  large  families  were  the  order  of  these  days.  All 
the  sons  served  the  Confederacy.  Among  them  was 
Quincy's  grandfather,  Henry  Mansfield  Mills,  who  was 

40 


In  Confederate  Service  41 

bom  April  II,  1 83 1.  His  wife,  Mary  Dickson,  whom  he 
married  in  1853  (November  3),  died  in  1859,  leaving  one 
son,  Thomas  Millard  Mills,  born  September  i,  1856,  who 
became  the  father  of  Quincy  Sharpe  Mills  and  who  is  still 
living.  Henry  Mills  enlisted  in  one  of  the  first  military 
organizations  formed  in  that  region  for  service  in  the  Civil 
War,  Company  C  (part  of  the  4th  North  Carolina  regi- 
ment of  infantry)  of  Statesville,  commanded  by  Captain 
Andrews.  He  did  not  go  to  the  front,  however;  he  was 
found  physically  disqualified,  and  sent  home  to  serve  in 
civil  life.  The  Confederate  Government  appointed  him 
tithing  agent  and  postmaster  at  Granite  Hill,  Iredell  Co., 
and  he  discharged  the  duties  of  these  positions  faithfully 
to  the  end  of  the  conflict.  His  pardon  for  having  served 
the  Confederacy,  a  formidable  looking  document  signed  by 
Andrew  Johnson,  is  in  the  possession  of  his  children,  and  at 
this  late  day  they  are  still  given  to  explosions  of  wrath 
when  they  speak  of  it.  Every  man  who  served  the  Con- 
federate Government  officially  received  one  of  these  par- 
dons. One  of  Henry  Mills's  brothers,  Quincy's  grand- 
uncle.  Dr.  Richard  Mills,  was  a  surgeon  in  the  Confeder- 
ate army  throughout  the  war.  He  was  employed  much  of 
the  time  in  the  military  hospitals  aroimd  Richmond.  Two 
other  brothers,  Frank  and  Harrison,  were  in  Company  B, 
second  North  Carolina  regiment  of  cavalry,  and  saw  active 
service  in  the  four  years'  campaigns  from  1861  to  1865. 
The  fifth  brother,  James,  also  volunteered,  but  was  as- 
signed to  duty  at  home  as  an  expert  in  mill  machinery. 

The  drain  of  the  war  and  the  collapse  of  the  Confederacy 
brought  financial  ruin  to  the  Mills  family  as  to  practically 
the  entire  South.  Their  old  home,  handed  down  from 
Nathaniel,  the  pioneer,  passed  out  of  their  hands.  All  the 
brothers  returned  to  Iredell  County  when  the  struggle  was 
over,  and  Henry  settled  down  on  a  small  farm  on  the  east- 
em  edge  of  Statesville.    He  contracted  a  second  marriage 


42  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

with  Miss  Anna  Robinson,  and  of  this  marriage  five  chil- 
dren were  bom.  These  were:  Richard  J.  Mills,  James 
Forney  Mills,  Mary  Elizabeth  Mills  Cowan,  Nannie 
Williams  Mills  and  Hugh  Mills.  Mrs.  Cowan  and  Miss 
Mills  contribute  reminiscences  to  this  book.  James 
Forney  Mills,  to  anticipate  a  little,  joined  the  army  in  the 
Spanish  War  as  a  member  of  the  Iredell  Blues,  a  historic 
military  organization  of  Statesville  incorporated  in  the 
First  North  Carolina  Regiment.  He  was  one  of  the  first 
American  soldiers  to  set  foot  on  Cuban  soil,  and  he  made 
his  campaign  notable  by  a  series  of  vivid  letters,  describing 
events  and  conditions,  which  were  published  in  the  States- 
ville Landmark. 

To  go  back,  the  farm  on  which  Henry  Mansfield  Mills 
made  his  home  after  the  close  of  the  Civil  War  was  a 
picturesque  spot  in  a  rolling  country  of  alternating  woods 
and  farm  lands,  which  stretches  far  to  the  east  and  south 
of  Statesville.  We  shall  return  to  it  presently,  for  it  was 
one  of  the  great  influences  in  Quincy  Mills's  boyhood. 
There  his  grandfather,  tired  from  the  war  that  had  raged 
around  him,  though  his  part  was  only  that  of  a  non-com- 
batant, and  depressed  by  the  sorrows  of  reconstruction 
days,  settled  down  into  a  quiet  life  which  was  prolonged 
to  August  1 8,  1909,  when  he  was  in  his  seventy-ninth  year. 
There  grew  up  Thomas  Millard  Mills  and  his  half  brothers 
and  sisters  among  the  cramped  and  gloomy  conditions  and 
in  the  saddened  atmosphere  which  pervaded  the  Southern 
States  for  almost  a  quarter  of  a  century. 

A  vivid  idea  of  the  conditions  of  the  time  as  they  are 
preserved  in  memory  by  Nannie  Sharpe,  now  Mrs.  Mills, 
has  already  been  given  in  her  own  words.  While  the  young 
Mills  was  growing  to  manhood  at  his  father's  house,  she 
was  developing  from  girlhood  into  young  womanhood 
under  her  widowed  mother's  care  in  the  Statesville  home 
of  the  Sharpes.    The  two  young  people — she  was  three 


Family  Affairs  43 

years  the  younger,  having  been  born  December  6,  1859 — 
were  of  different  racial  descent,  and,  back  of  the  war,  held 
different  traditions.  But  there  was  never  anything  like 
a  feud  between  the  two  religious  elements  in  North  Caro- 
lina, once  the  curse  of  governmental  persecution  had  been 
abolished  by  the  Revolution.  At  any  rate,  difference  in 
religion  or  antecedents  has  never  been  a  serious  obstacle 
to  the  mating  of  youth.  It  never  was  in  North  Carolina. 
It  did  not  so  operate  in  the  Mills  family.  Therein  there 
was  a  double  blending.  Thomas  M.  Mills  became  the 
husband  of  Nannie  Sharpe,  and  his  half  sister,  Mary 
Elizabeth  Mills,  took  for  her  husband  James  Leonidas 
Cowan,  a  descendant  of  John  Knox,  but  so  unlike  his  an- 
cestor in  temperament  as  to  afford  friends  and  relations  an 
ever  amusing  contrast  with  the  grim  Scottish  reformer. 

The  young  Mills  couple  were  married  in  Statesville, 
on  September  25,  1881.  There  Quincy  was  born  on  Jan- 
uary 15,  1884,  and  there  was  his  home  for  the  first  five 
years  of  his  life.  He  was  christened  in  Trinity  Church, 
Statesville,  and  of  the  event  his  aunt,  Mrs.  Mary  Elizabeth 
Mills  Cowan,  writes  in  a  memoir,  prepared  for  use  in  this 
book :  "  I  remember  his  baptism  as  one  of  the  most  beauti- 
ful I  ever  witnessed,  with  the  late  afternoon  sunshine 
slanting  through  the  stained  glass  window  and  falling  on 
his  head.    It  seemed  more  than  an  earthly  baptism." 

We  first  get  a  real  vision  of  the  boy  as  a  quaint  and  lov- 
able little  chap,  delicate  and  reflective  in  one  aspect,  but 
full  of  animal  spirits,  love  of  contention  and  the  joy  of  life 
at  the  same  time.  The  boy  was  father  to  the  man  in  his 
curious  mixture  of  contradictory  qualities,  of  controversy 
and  amiability,  of  alert  action  and  dreamy  contemplation. 
He  remained  an  only  child,  and  the  bonds  of  affection 
between  him  and  his  mother  were  strongly  and  closely 
knit.    Here  is  a  picture  of  him  in  this  first  phase : 

" Quincy 's  interest  in  books,"  Mrs.  Mills  writes,  "be- 


44  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

gan  by  the  time  he  could  hold  one  in  his  hands.  From 
then  on  to  the  time  when  he  could  read  for  himself,  I  was 
called  upon  to  explain  pictures  and  put  in  all  my  spare 
moments  reading  aloud  for  him — and  what  a  delight  it  was 
to  both  of  us! "  The  reading  aloud  did  not  cease  with  his 
ability  to  read  for  himself.  We  shall  learn  more  of  it 
presently;  but  of  this  earliest  period  of  the  opening  of  the 
child  mind  in  contact  with  the  mother's,  Mrs.  Mills  goes 
on:  "I  remember  well  one  book,  a  natural  history, 
which  was  for  a  long  while  his  special  favorite.  I  was  re- 
quired to  tell  the  story  of  each  picture  over  and  over  again 
and  whenever  we  reached  the  picture  of  a  herring  which 
adorned  one  page,  he  would  plant  a  fat  finger  on  it  and 
contradict  me  when  I  read  out  'Herring.'  'No,'  he  would 
say,  'it's  a  fish!'  Our  argument  would  go  on  until  I  tired 
out  and  surrendered,  saying,  'Well,  have  it  your  own  way,' 
and  the  game  ended  in  a  laugh  and  a  romp. 

"How  this  started,  I  do  not  remember,  but  we  always 
used  exactly  the  same  words.  It  seems  a  small  thing  to 
tell,  but  it  is  remarkable  that  at  this  early  age  Quincy 
should  have  shown  this  whimsical  trait  of  taking  the  op- 
posite side  and  arguing  for  argument's  sake.  The  love  of 
argument  grew  with  his  growth.  All  who  knew  him  well 
were  aware  of  his  gleeful  habit  of  'ragging'  over  some  ques- 
tion of  more  or  less  serious  or  perhaps  only  comical  inter- 
est. To  the  end  of  his  life  he  delighted  in  starting  an  argu- 
ment with  me  over  some  perfectly  idiotic  thing  or  other. 
Of  course,  he  always  out-argued  me  and  my  final  resort 
would  be  as  of  old :  '  Well,  have  it  your  own  way ! '  Then 
we  would  smile,  recalling  the  herring  cf  long  ago.  I  have 
no  doubt  that  he  spends  part  of  his  time  now,  wherever  he 
is,  in  this  fascinating  pastime  of  argument." 

After  this  fond  picture  Mrs.  Mills's  declaration  that  the 
boy  was  a  joy  to  his  parents  from  the  day  of  his  birth  to 
that  of  his  death  will  appear  an  obvious  statement.    She 


Early  Boyhood  Traits  45 

says  he  was  "truthful,  obedient,  studious,  helpful,  kind- 
hearted,  because  it  was  his  nature  to  be  so.  It  was  never 
necessai*y  to  train  him  in  these  qualities.  He  was  incap- 
able of  anything  low  or  mean. ' '  The  associates  of  his  later 
years  endorse  these  claims.  It  would  be  an  absurd  distor- 
tion, however,  a  mawkish  injustice,  to  leave  the  impres- 
sion that  Mills  was  goody-goody  or  sentimental,  or  just 
whimsically  contentious.  Nothing  could  be  farther  from 
the  truth.  There  was  nothing  of  the  milksop  or  the  molly- 
coddle about  him  and  equally  little  of  the  eccentric  or  the 
perverse.  His  goodness  never  degenerated  into  weakness. 
His  gayety  and  his  affectionate  disposition  were  shot 
through  even  in  his  childhood  as  well  as  in  his  manhood 
with  a  spirit  of  aggression,  a  combativeness  which  went 
far  beyond  the  mere  clash  of  wits,  and  which,  while  gener- 
ally asserting  itself  in  worthy  causes  always  expressed  an 
individual  view,  a  strong  will  and  a  temperament  of  smol- 
dering fire. 

Of  boyhood  manifestations,  his  mother  says:  "He  was 
always  keen  for  games  and  play,  full  of  Hfe  and  high  spirits. 
He  filled  the  house  and  its  surroundings  with  noise  and 
shouts  of  laughter.  I  had  to  reprove  him— it  was  the  only 
thing  I  had  to  reprove  him  for— for  his  tendency  to  wear 
a  chip  on  his  shoulder  in  his  mixing  with  boys  of  his  own 
age.  It  seems  to  be  the  nature  of  small  boys  to  pummel 
each  other  and  he  was  no  exception." 

So  the  first  years  slipped  by.  The  family  hved  in  these 
early  years  in  the  house  which  Mrs.  Mills's  father  bought 
in  1845,  shortly  after  his  marriage.  In  1889  there  was  an 
important  change.  Quincy  was  about  five  and  a  half  years 
old  when  his  father  decided  to  leave  Statesville  and  go 
into  business  with  a  friend  in  Richmond,  Virginia.  The 
experiment,  however,  only  lasted  two  years;  it  turned  out 
unfortunately.  As  a  result,  the  family  moved,  in  March, 
1 89 1,  to  South  Boston,  a  small  town  of  three  or  four  thou- 


46  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

sand  people  in  the  same  state.  They  remained  there  three 
years  until  the  spring  of  1894,  ^-^^  there  we  first  find 
Quincy  figuring  as  a  schoolboy.  He  was  seven  and  a  half 
years  old  when  he  was  enrolled  as  a  pupil  in  the  primary 
department  of  the  South  Boston  graded  school.  He  was 
a  willing,  even  an  eager  learner.  Already  he  had  the  facul- 
ty of  exciting  interest  in  others  and  winning  their  affection. 
He  remained  in  the  school  until  the  spring  of  1 894  when  his 
parents  decided  to  return  to  Statesville.  He  was  then  a 
little  more  than  ten  years  old.  Upon  his  leaving,  his 
teacher  wrote  a  note  about  him  to  his  mother.  It  is  of 
value  as  showing  the  estimate  which  a  trained  observer, 
unconnected  with  him  by  blood  ties,  placed  upon  him 
thus  early,  so  it  is  inserted  here: 

Dear  Mrs.  Mills: — You  don't  know  how  I  hate  to  give 
Quincy  up.  He  is  such  a  dear  nice  little  fellow  that  I  shall 
miss  him  much.  I  have  become  very  fond  of  him  during  our 
school  relationship,  and  I  think  all  the  scholars  are  as  sorry  as 
I  to  see  him  leave.  He  is  a  perfect  gentleman  in  manner  and 
in  every  way.    Well  may  you  be  proud  of  such  a  son. 

When  you  have  a  picture  of  Quincy  to  spare,  please  send 

me  one. 

Sincerely  yours, 

Nannie  Harris. 

In  South  Boston,  the  natural  bent  of  the  boy's  mind  first 
asserted  itself.  He  took  to  the  pen,  apparently  by  his  own 
spontaneous  impulse.  His  mother  tells  of  it  thus:  "At 
this  period  Quincy  began  writing  little  poems  and  stories, 
which  he  would  bring  to  me  to  read  and  talk  over.  I 
thought  them  wonderful  for  his  age,  but  my  praise  was 
doled  out  sparingly  and  my  admiration  kept  to  myself,  as 
I  did  not  want  to  turn  my  child  into  a  self-conscious,  con- 
ceited little  nuisance."  It  may  be  interjected  here  that 
to  the  day  of  his  death  Mills's  total  lack  of  self-conscious- 


Life  in  Statesville  47 

ness,  the  modesty  which  tempered  his  sense  of  his  own 
capabiHty,  was  one  of  his  most  winning  characteristics. 
But  to  return  to  Mrs.  Mills,  she  goes  on:  "Some  of  these 
first  efforts  are  among  my  treasures  now  and  they  are  as 
precious  to  me  as  the  best  editorials  he  wrote  for  The  Even- 
ing Sun!'' 

The  new  phase  of  life,  begun  with  the  return  to  States- 
ville, caused  an  interruption  in  the  writing  habit  which  was 
not  resumed  until  young  Mills  was  a  student  at  the  Uni- 
versity of  North  Carolina.  Mrs.  Mills  explains:  "The 
break  was  due,  perhaps,  to  the  fact  that  our  Statesville 
home  was  constantly  filled  with  relatives  or  friends.  As 
we  were  never  alone,  there  was  no  opportunity  for  the 
quiet  and  concentration  needed  for  such  work.  Then,  too, 
I  had  him  take  music  lessons  for  two  years.  He  liked  music 
and  got  on  famously,  but  perhaps  he  should  have  used  the 
time  in  outdoor  sports  with  other  boys.  I  am  angry  with 
myself  whenever  my  mind  brings  up  the  picture  of  my 
little  boy  perched  on  the  piano  stool,  practising  away, 
cheerfully  and  zealously — that  was  how  he  did  all  his 
work."  Really  there  is  no  ground  for  reproach;  Mills  was 
intensely  fond  of  music  and  in  his  later  years  was  an 
habitual  listener  at  the  Metropolitan  Opera  House,  or 
indeed  anywhere  that  songbirds  of  passage  gave  opera  in 
New  York.  He  never  pretended  to  critical  judgment,  but 
he  had  a  thirst  for  melody,  which  was  not  altogether  un- 
cultivated, and  Mrs.  Mills  herself  adds  to  the  passage  just 
quoted  these  words :  * '  Often  he  was  thankful  for  the  knowl- 
edge of  music  that  these  two  years  gave  him." 

At  the  same  time,  outdoor  sports,  school  studies  and  the 
social  side  of  life  were  not  neglected.  It  was  unquestion- 
ably his  constant  intercourse  with  the  friends  who  flocked 
to  the  Statesville  home  that  gave  him  the  habit  of  pleasant 
relations  with  all  sorts  of  people,  his  ready  gift  of  conversa- 
tion and  the  easy  unconsciousness  that  made  him  what  is 


48  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

popularly  called  "a  good  mixer."  As  for  sport,  we  find 
him  through  his  early  years  enjoying  outdoor  amusements 
of  all  sorts.  He  played  at  boyish  games  with  zest  and 
skill;  more  of  this  will  appear  as  a  phase  of  his  college 
career;  he  loved  the  country.  North  Carolina  has  no 
large  city,  only  towns  of  greater  or  less  size,  and  all  colored 
as  to  their  ways  and  standards  by  their  rural  surroundings. 
Except  for  his  two  early  years  in  Richmond,  Mills's  entire 
life  until  he  came  to  New  York  was  spent  in  the  environ- 
ment of  small  communities.  If  he  had  something  of  town 
bringing  up,  he  was  almost  equally  a  country  boy,  and  he 
was  not  a  city  product  in  any  degree.  He  had  an  ardent 
love  of  the  country  and  down  to  his  army  days  used  to  go 
off  frequently  for  long  woodland  and  meadow  strolls  with 
a  cherished  companion.  As  his  boyhood  wore  on,  he 
roamed  far  and  wide  through  the  woods  of  Iredell,  steeping 
his  nature  in  the  beauty  of  the  land  and  the  intoxication  of 
the  free  air. 

He  had  a  considerable  mechanical  turn  also.  He  was 
interested  in  machinery  and  tools.  He  began  by  making 
wooden  toys  for  himself;  later  he  strung  telephone  lines 
and  built  useful  pieces  of  furniture.  Among  the  toys  he 
made  were  miniature  cannon ;  his  mother  still  has  some  of 
them  packed  away  at  her  home  in  Statesville.  They  are 
made  of  wood  and  mounted  on  cast-off  wheels  found  about 
his  grandfather  Mills's  farm.  Like  all  boys  he  loved  toy 
soldiers.  During  his  years  at  Statesville,  he  spent  much 
of  his  time  on  this  farm  which  lay  on  the  outskirts  of  the 
town.  There  he  learned  the  real  country  life.  It  was  a 
strong  influence  in  his  development.  Concerning  this 
period,  his  aunt,  Mrs.  Cowan,  his  father's  sister,  furnishes 
some  characteristic  recollections. 

"He  was  always,"  she  writes,  "a  bright,  happy  child, 
never  discontented  with  his  lot,  or  wishing  for  other  play- 


A  Wonderful  Playground  49 

grounds,  or  'someone  to  play  with'  as  is  usually  the  burden 
of  an  only  child's  existence.  When  he  wanted  to  play 
Indian,  he  would  represent  Sitting  Bull,  Spotted  Tail  or 
some  other  chief  by  turns,  pitching  his  teepee  anyivherfe. 
he  found  room,  using  chairs  or  anything  that  came  handy 
to  spread  his  tent  cover  over.  Many  are  the  times  I  re- 
member having  trouble  getting  the  chicken  or  turkey 
feathers  tied  to  his  sunny  curls  at  just  the  right  angle; 
when  he  looked  into  the  mirror  and  they  did  not  stand  just 
right  they  had  to  be  re-tied,  sometimes  over  and  over. 
Then  the  draping  of  Grandmother's  big  gray  shawl  was 
another  art  that  was  often  difficult ;  no  Indian  blanket  was 
ever  arranged  on  a  warrior's  shoulders  with  more  care. 

*  *  Later  came  the  soldier  and  sailor  age  when  he  built  forts 
all  around  and  sank  bell-buoys — made  of  beef  juice  bottles 
— in  the  fishpond  at  his  grandfather's;  he  also  built  war- 
ships, one  of  which,  covered  with  scraps  of  sheet  iron,  with 
toy  cannon  mounted  on  the  deck,  was  still  at  the  old  home 
after  the  boy  had  grown  to  manhood.  This  ship  was  at 
least  four  feet  long,  and  a  very  good  model — considering 
it  to  be  the  work  of  a  child  who  had  never  seen  a  seagoing 
vessel  of  any  kind. 

' '  Quincy  had  quite  a  following  of  small  boys  at  this  time, 
and  he  was  always  the  captain  or  leader  in  their  games. 
I  remember  his  bringing  a  basket  of  fireworks  down  to 
Grandfather's  one  Christmas  night  to  fire  off  around  this 
same  pond;  all  the  children  of  the  neighborhood  gathered, 
and  what  a  good  time  and  grand  celebration  they  had. 
A  spark  dropped  into  one  of  the  baskets  of  'babywakers' 
and  'devilchasers* ;  one  boy  jumped  into  the  midst  of  the 
resulting  explosion  to  stamp  out  the  fire  and  save  what  he 
could;  but  fortunately,  no  one  was  hurt  while  everybody 
enjoyed  the  excitement ;  we  older  people  laughed  and  were 
frightened  at  the  same  time.  My  own  last  letter  from 
Quincy,  written  on  the  4th  of  July,  191 8,  referred  to  this 


50  One  Who  Gave  His  Life     . 

explosion  of  the  Christmas  fireworks,  or,  rather,  I  could 
read  between  the  lines  that  he  was  thinking  of  that  long- 
ago  fun.  He  wrote  that  they  were  very  quiet  that  day, 
that  it  was  the  most  quiet  4th  of  July  he  could  ever  remem- 
ber spending;  but  he  added,  'We  will  have  fireworks  and 
celebration  enough  to  pay  for  it — and  it  will  not  be  baby- 
wakers  and  devilchasers.' 

"As  well  as  I  remember  he  never  cared  for  hunting, 
though  some  of  the  boys  of  his  friendship  thought  them- 
selves great  sportsmen.  One  of  his  uncles  used  to  offer  to 
take  him  duckhunting  down  the  creek,  but  I  do  not  re- 
member his  going,  though  he  may  have.  I  recall  that  he 
went  fishing  with  another  uncle,  and  seemed  much  pleased 
with  the  outings,  whether  they  brought  home  fish  or  not. 

"Quincy  was  always  a  serious,  thoughtful  child,  re- 
spectful to  older  people  and  kind  to  children;  his  mother 
read  to  him  from  the  time  he  could  listen,  and  his  mind  was 
stored  with  the  best  thoughts  from  his  earliest  days. 
When  he  was  older  he  read  good  literature,  never  trash ;  I 
have  heard  him  say  that  the  popular  novels,  generally  read, 
held  no  attraction  for  him.  When  he  first  read  Kipling, 
his  verdict  was  that  Kipling  was  coarse,  but  later  he  be- 
came very  fond  of  him  and  said  he  just  saw  life  as  it  was, 
'Each  in  his  separate  star.' 

"When  he  was  a  very  small  boy  we  used  to  be  greatly 
amused  at  his  quaint  sayings;  on  one  visit  to  his  Grand- 
father's, a  pet  rooster  deprived  him  of  a  biscuit,  picking  it 
out  of  his  hand.  One  of  the  uncles  never  got  through 
laughing  over  Quincy's  elegant  and  eloquent  remarks 
addressed  to  the  rooster  which  ran  something  like  this: 
'Oh !  you  imp  of  blackness,  you  son  of  Belial,  you  thieving, 
dishonorable  coward  to  take  the  bread  out  of  children's 
mouths  instead  of  scratching  for  an  honest  living ! '  This 
was  when  he  was  hardly  more  than  an  infant. 

"When  my  little  daughter,  Anna  Cowan,  came  to  us, 


Ties  that  Held  Fast  5i 

Quincy  was  away  at  school,  but  he  came  home  to  see  the 
first  arrival  in  the  family  since  his  own.  He  was  delighted 
with  his  new  relative,  and  said  he  would  be  an  uncle  instead 
of  a  cousin  to  her;  then  and  there  he  made  plans  for  her 
future,  even  discussing  her  behavior  as  it  should  be  when 
she  was  grown  up. 

' '  Then  came  the  college  years  when  he  was  a  prize  stu- 
dent at  the  University  of  the  State.  How  proud  we  were  of 
his  record!  With  what  pleasure  we  followed  his  career, 
and  through  those  busy  year's  he  would  take  time  to  write 
to  this  baby  cousin  occasionally.  And  they  were  busy 
years.  A  man  cannot  take  his  work  seriously,  be  editor  of 
three  college  periodicals,  correspondent  for  two  newspapers, 
win  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  key  and  medals  and  honors  in  all 
his  work,  and  not  be  busy. 

"After  his  graduation  he  passed  out  of  our  home  life 
but  for  the  letters  and  gifts  that  he  constantly  sent ;  he 
never  made  a  business  or  pleasure  trip  anywhere  without 
remembering  Anna  Cowan.  We  have  souvenirs  from 
many  cities  he  visited  in  his  newspaper  days.  Then  came 
the  final  letters  and  cards  from  beyond  the  sea,  all  so 
sacred  and  precious.  I  am  sure  the  world  is  better  for  his 
passing  this  way." 

Miss  Nannie  Williams  Mills,  of  Statesville,  another 
aunt,  has  also  contributed  pleasant  childhood  anecdotes: 
"My  memory  of  Quincy's  visits  at  home,"  she  writes, 
addressing  Mrs.  Mills,  "rarely  goes  back  to  when  my  little 
brother,  Lee,  was  living,  though  I  know  Quincy  was  then 
sometimes  at  home.  I  remember  sending  Allen  Caldwell, 
the  eldest  of  the  Rev.  Dallas  Caldwell's  boys,  up  to  your 
house  to  bring  Quincy  down  home,  as  he  was  too  small  to 
come  alone.  Those  boys — there  were  three  of  them — were 
a  rough  and  tumble  lot,  and  with  Hugh,  Lee  and  Quincy 
would  have  blood-curdling  Indian  fights,  with  handmade 


52  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

wooden  weapons,  bows  and  arrows,  daggers  and  so  on. 
Sometimes  I  feared  they  would  really  hurt  each  other,  but 
Quincy,  the  youngest  of  the  gang,  always  escaped  injury 
and  enjoyed  it  as  much  as  any. 

"It  was  after  the  death  of  Lee  that  I  had  Quincy  with 
me  so  much.  It  must  have  helped  me  to  bear  that  first 
real  trouble,  for  I  had  the  care  of  him  just  as  I  had  had  of 
Lee,  and  loved  to  stay  out  in  the  open  to  entertain  him.  I 
remember  taking  Quincy  to  the  meadow  to  play  in  the  little 
stream  which  fed  the  two  fishponds;  this  was  such  a 
shallow  stream  that  it  was  fine  for  him  to  wade  in,  but  it 
was  slippery,  and  on  one  occasion  he  was  splashing  along, 
having  the  best  of  times  when  his  feet  slipped  and  down 
in  mud  and  water  he  went.  He  didn't  mind  the  ducking, 
but  he  hadn't  any  dry  clothes  at  our  house  and  could  not 
go  home  in  these.  So  I  hunted  for  some  of  Lee's  which  he 
had  when  about  seven  years  old ;  but  when  I  had  Quincy 
dressed  the  trousers  would  not  meet  round  the  waist,  he 
was  such  a  fat,  round  youngster,  so  we  helped  out  the 
bands  with  string  in  each  buttonhole  and  soon  had  him 
back  at  play.  I  have  always  thought  that  Quincy  must 
have  been  a  very  much  better  developed  child  at  seven 
than  Lee  was,  as  this  incident  shows. 

"One  of  the  pleasures  Quincy  most  enjoyed  was  playing 
circus.  After  each  circus  that  visited  town  we  had  a  per- 
fect wave  of  trapeze  performances  in  the  old  barn  or  on  a 
rope  trapeze  hung  from  a  big  oak  tree  just  in  front  of  it. 
Quincy  would  bring  Rob  Rickert,  Oscar  Rousseau  and 
Allen  Mills  down  home  with  him  and  these  four  would 
perform  daring  feats,  hanging  by  their  feet,  head  down, 
being  their  most  wonderful  act.  The  boys  would  take 
turns  performing  in  this  way,  often  having  to  boost  each 
other  up  until  they  became  expert  enough  to  hold  on  un- 
aided. One  day  when  such  a  show  was  in  progress,  some- 
thing else  popped  into  Quincy's  active  mind,  and  off  the 


Katie's  Funeral  53 

first  three  actors  went  to  the  pond,  leaving  poor  Allen 
hanging  head  downward.  Allen  wasn't  very  expert,  the 
ground  beneath  was  stony  and  some  inches  out  of  his 
reach,  therefore  when  he  realized  that  he  had  been  deserted 
he  set  up  a  howl  that  reached  me,  indoors,  but  not  the 
boys.  I  went  to  the  rescue,  finding  a  very  red-faced  little 
boy,  not  from  anger,  however,  but  from  his  topsy-turvy 
position.  But  as  soon  as  I  released  him  from  his  uncom- 
fortable plight  he  ran  off  to  join  the  others,  and  there  was 
no  further  disturbance. 

' '  The  pond  was,  perhaps,  the  greatest  delight  of  all  to 
Quincy  at  Grandpa's.  It  afforded  all  sorts  of  sports,  from 
wading  and  swimming  in  summer  and  skating  and  sliding 
in  winter  to  sea-fights  all  the  year  round.  Quincy's  mind 
was  well  stored  with  stories  from  history  and  fiction  of 
naval  battles  and  deeds  of  piracy,  and  many  such  fights 
as  that  of  the  Constitution  and  Guerriere  and  the  Monitor 
and  Merrimac  were  reenacted  on  the  peaceful  waters  of 
our  pond.  Quincy  would  work  for  days  with  hammer, 
nails,  old  planks  and  tin  sheathing,  constructing  gun  boats; 
he  had  them  from  three  feet  in  length  down  to  only  a  few 
inches.  These  finished,  he  and  his  companies  would  wade 
out  and  anchor  a  Monitor  far  out  upon  the  pond,  then 
place  toy  cannon  upon  the  banks  and  open  battle  on 
the  boat.  It  was  interesting  to  watch,  for  the  cannon  were 
often  loaded  with  real  powder  and  made  a  realistic  imita- 
tion of  the  genuine  thing.  I  used  to  wonder  if  Quincy 
would  go  into  the  navy  when  he  grew  up,  as  all  naval 
affairs  were  so  fascinating  to  him  in  early  boyhood,  and 
when  he  went  to  Plattsburg  I  reminded  him  of  those  former 
pleasures. 

' '  Well  I  remember  Katie's  funeral.  Katie  was  the  black 
and  white  spotted  cat  that  Ed.  Carlton  shot.  Quincy  was 
deeply  grieved,  and  wanted  to  bury  Katie  in  some  place 
where  the  grave  would  be  undisturbed.     It  was  decided 


54  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

that  Grandpa's  place  was  permanent  enough  to  serve  the 
purpose  and  a  large  pasteboard  box  served  as  a  coffin  in 
which  Katie's  body  lay  in  state  overnight  on  the  back 
piazza  of  your  house.  Next  morning  you  and  Quincy 
brought  the  remains  down  home,  and  great  masses  of  vio- 
lets both  in  the  box  and  to  put  on  the  grave.  We  three 
selected  a  suitable  spot  and  proceeded  to  dig  the  grave 
ourselves.  It  was  a  very  real  trouble  to  Quincy,  and  be- 
tween sobs  he  worked  until  his  task  was  completed.  But 
during  the  burial  a  negro  boy  who  was  working  about  the 
lot  passed  by,  and,  seeing  the  flowers,  was  so  amused  that 
he  forgot  all  decorum  and  laughed  aloud,  saying  to  Forney, 
'Good  Lawd,  Mistah  Forney,  dat  woman  done  put  blos- 
soms on  dat  cat's  grave ! '  Quincy  stopped  in  the  midst  of 
his  last  bit  of  smoothing  up  the  mound,  and  just  pelted 
Jim  with  stones  for  his  ill-timed  levity.  I  was  both  scan- 
dalized and  tickled,  but  dared  not  let  Quincy  know,  as  it 
would  hurt  his  feelings.  Never  since  have  I  thought  of  this 
incident  without  a  smile,  for  Quincy's  quick  transition 
from  grief  to  rage  was  so  ridiculous  and  so  pathetic. 

"When  I  think  back  on  Quincy's  playing  I  remember 
that  he  was  always  the  leader,  and  his  boy  friends  willing- 
ly followed,  rarely  ever  disagreeing  over  their  games.  I 
never  knew  Quincy  and  those  boys,  his  daily  companions, 
to  fall  out  and  fight  over  anything,  down  home.  If  any- 
thing didn't  go  to  please  him,  he  commanded  the  boys  to 
do  differently,  and  they  yielded.  One  day  I  chanced  to  go 
into  our  dining  room  just  in  time  to  see  Quincy  give  Allen 
Mills  a  sharp  box  on  the  ear.  I  enquired  the  reason  for 
such  treatment  of  a  guest,  and  Quincy  answered  in  a  digni- 
fied tone  that  Allen  was  meddling  with  some  ornament  I 
had  forbidden  the  boys  to  touch.  I  couldn't  do  other 
than  let  the  case  rest  as  Quincy  had  arbitrated  it. 
Allen  took  the  reproof  without  resenting  it,  as  far  as  I 
observed." 


Dream  of  Truth  55 

Among  the  papers  which  Mills  has  left  are  the  sketches 
or  first  drafts  of  several  short  stories.  He  had  not  given 
any  great  time  or  effort  to  this  sort  of  writing.  The  pieces 
are  mere  experiments,  never  fully  elaborated  and  showing 
no  sign  that  he  ever  tried  to  publish  them.  They  afford 
some  interesting  light,  however,  upon  the  inner  workings 
of  his  mind.  One  of  these,  which  he  entitled  When  Dreams 
Come  True,  and  which  he  has  himself  marked  as  resembling 
Stevenson's  Will  of  the  Mill,  has  its  scene  undoubtedly 
upon  this  land  of  his  grandfather's  as  recalled  by  his  own 
adult  memory.  In  the  person  of  the  hero  of  the  tale  he 
appears  first  "walking  down  a  narrow  lane,  thickly  starred 
on  either  side  with  daisies."  He  completes  the  picture: 
"Before  him  the  way  dropped  precipitously  into  a  nar- 
row valley,  at  the  bottom  of  which  his  eye  caught  the  clear 
waters  of  a  shallow  brook  flashing  in  the  sunlight.  Beyond 
it  the  land  rose  steeply  to  the  opposite  hilltop,  which  was 
crested  with  wood.  The  rolling  fields  around,  where  they 
were  not  luxuriant  with  corn,  were  bright  with  daisies, 
like  the  lane." 

He  credits  his  hero  with  that  impression,  which  many  peo- 
ple experience,  of  the  scene  and  the  action  of  the  moment 
being  a  revival  of  something  in  his  past.  It  has  an  in- 
timacy that  haunts  yet  eludes  him.  As  he  goes  on  down 
the  path  he  comes  upon  an  old  man  and  a  little  boy.  They 
are  on  opposite  sides  of  the  brook,  which  is  so  narrow  that 
he  could  have  leaped  across  it  with  ease.  "The  child, 
bareheaded,  with  towsled  locks,  shining  in  the  bright  light, 
stooped  over  the  water's  edge,  absorbed  in  floating  a  tiny 
canoe,  whittled  from  an  elder  stalk.  The  old  man  stood 
regarding  him  earnestly,  his  bony  hands  folded  before  him 
over  the  handle  of  a  staff,  on  which  he  leaned."  The  old 
man's  beard  was  silvery  white,  but  his  features  were  hid- 
den by  the  brim  of  a  soft  black  hat.  He  was  as  concen- 
trated upon  the  child's  actions  as  the  child  was  upon  his 


56  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

boat.  He  exclaims:  "My  boy,  I  would  give  all  I  possess 
to  be  just  you  and  play  again  in  the  stream." 

The  boy  lifts  his  face  and  the  hero  recognizes  himself  of 
bygone  years.  The  boy  sees  it  too,  and  exclaims, ' '  Why,  I  am 
you."  The  old  man  turns;  he  also  is  the  same  being  in 
another  phase.  "Who  am  I?"  cries  out  the  hero  in  his 
prime.  "You  are  our  dreams  come  true,"  the  others 
reply. 

It  is  a  curious  bit  of  mysticism,  expressing  an  undercur- 
rent in  Mills's  nature.  It  indicates  clearly  the  effect  of 
his  countryside  experiences  not  only  on  the  pictorial 
equipment  of  his  mind  but  on  the  current  of  his  musings 
as  to  the  nature  and  meaning  of  life. 

But  besides  the  contemplative  effects  of  his  days  on  his 
grandfather's  farm,  this  time  gave  great  opportunity  for 
his  love  of  soldiering.  He  and  his  boy  companions  formed 
an  army  of  the  fancy  and  they  campaigned  all  over  the 
fields  and  hills  and  through  the  woods  and  valleys.  They 
fought  battles,  made  long  marches  and  built  forts  upon  the 
high  ridges.  His  liking  for  things  military  ran  beyond  the 
ordinary  adolescent  love  of  glitter  and  noise.  He  planned 
strategic  movements  both  with  his  tin  warriors  and  with 
his  comrades  and  fought  them  in  an  odd  spirit  of  reality. 
His  parents  talked  with  him  in  his  fourteenth  or  fifteenth 
year  of  entering  the  Academy  at  West  Point.  There  was 
good  reason  to  think  he  could  secure  the  appointment  from 
his  home  district.  He  was  quite  clear,  however,  that  he 
would  not  like  the  monotonous  routine  of  soldiering  in 
time  of  peace.  It  was  the  stern  business  of  real  war  that 
appealed  to  his  eager  and  idealistic  nature  and  not  the 
formalism  nor  yet  the  showy,  ornamental  side  of  the  mar- 
tial career. 

Throughout  the  entire  boyhood  period  his  love  of  books 
and  their  contents  was  an  all  pervading  influence.  In  the 
Statesville  epoch  it  had  a  special  aspect,  which  may  best 


First  Glimpses  of  Politics  57 

be  described  in  the  words  of  Mrs.  Mills.  "  My  mother 
lost  her  sight  when  Quincy  was  a  small  boy,"  she 
writes,  "and  all  my  spare  time  thereafter  was  given  to 
her.  Every  day  I  read  aloud  the  state  and  national  poli- 
tical happenings  and  such  news  of  foreign  governments 
as  was  published  in  the  Southern  papers.  During  the  ses- 
sions of  the  State  Legislature  she  wanted  to  hear  the  daily 
proceedings  of  that  body. 

' '  Interest  in  politics  is  part  of  the  Scotch-Irish  birthright. 
In  our  section  of  the  South,  political  discussion  is  carried 
on  wherever  men  meet,  and,  often,  the  women  are  as 
keenly  interested  as  the  men.  This  was  always  the  case  in 
our  family.  My  aunt,  Mrs.  S.  A.  Sharpe,  my  mother's 
sister,  though  now  almost  ninety-two  years  old,  I  found, 
during  a  stay  that  I  made  with  her  in  StatesviUe  last  winter 
(1919-20),  still  occupied  her  mind  to  a  large  extent  with 
public  affairs.  It  had  been  so  all  her  life.  My  mother,  too, 
had  this  racial  trait  in  an  unusual  degree,  and  the  fact  that 
my  father  had  been  in  the  thick  of  political  activity  in 
our  part  of  the  State  intensified  her  interest. 

' '  No  effort  was  ever  made  to  draw  Quincy's  attention  to 
our  political  readings,  but  he  could  not  help  hearing  some 
of  them  or  the  conversation  that  naturally  was  based  on 
them.  We  soon  found  that  he  was  listening  keenly,  ab- 
sorbing much  information  and  forming  political  opinions. 
It  came  naturally  to  him.  It  was  part  of  his  spiritual 
inheritance. 

"At  night,  the  reading  aloud  was  continued,  but  it  took 
an  entirely  different  direction.  The  lamplight  hours  were 
devoted  to  fiction,  and  at  Quincy's  urgent  dictation  every 
story  of  the  Revolutionary  period  that  could  be  found  had 
first  choice.  Among  them  were  many  old  romances  by 
Kennedy  of  Maryland  and  Simms  of  South  Carolina,  which 
are  hardly  known  to-day,  except  perhaps  to  a  few  in  their 
own  section.    My  mother  had  enjoyed  reading  them  in  hei 


58  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

girlhood  and  her  grandson's  delight  in  hearing  them  re- 
vived her  pleasure.  She  was  a  lifelong  lover  of  Scott,  too, 
and  Scott  we  always  fell  back  upon  when  the  newer  books 
seemed  insipid.  Poe,  Hawthorne,  Dickens,  Bulwer,  Victor 
Hugo,  George  Eliot,  Stevenson,  Mark  Twain,  Conan 
Doyle — his  Refugees  was  a  great  favorite — and  numerous 
others  yielded  us  many  happy  nights. 

"Another  ancient  book  we  enjoyed  that  was  an  old 
friend  of  my  mother's  was  Judge  Thompson's  Green  Moun- 
tain Boys,  published  in  1840.  This  old  romance  of  Revolu- 
tionary days  was  widely  popular  in  our  section,  and  many 
wellworn  copies  were  owned  in  our  town  and  county.  On 
the  surface,  it  seems  odd  that  a  book  written  by  a  Ver- 
monter  and  dealing  with  the  exploits  of  Northern  soldiers 
should  have  penetrated  the  South  and  gained  lasting 
favor.  The  explanation  is  that  it  tells  the  story  of  the  New 
England  Scotch- Irishmen  who  shared  our  fight  for  inde- 
pendence, and  the  bond  of  race  was  there  to  awaken  our 
interest  and  sympathy.  This  book  still  has  readers  in  the 
South  and  has  not  been  forgotten  here  in  New  York,  for 
the  Central  Library  now  has  in  its  circulating  department 
a  copy  showing  signs  of  use. 

"These  nightly  revels  in  the  world  of  imagination  went 
on  for  years.  They  were  of  all  seasons,  though  naturally 
the  long  winter  darkness  gave  the  fullest  opportunity.  I 
wish  I  had  the  power  to  convey  the  picture  of  our  South- 
ern home,  the  wide  open  fireplace,  the  old-fashioned  fur- 
nishings, my  blind  mother  and  my  little  son  listening 
eagerly,  he  with  his  pet  cat  on  his  knees — he  was  such  a 
boy  for  pets!  It  may  be  that  Quincy  became  surfeited 
with  fiction  during  these  years,  for  he  cared  little  for  it 
after  reaching  manhood.  In  the  latter  part  of  his  life 
Mrs.  Burnett  and  Margaret  Deland  were  the  only  novel- 
ists for  whom  he  retained  a  liking ;  their  books  he  never 
failed  to  read  as  they  came  from  the  press. 


Going  to  School  59 

"I  inherited  from  my  father  the  love  of  reading  aloud 
and  his  power  to  keep  it  up  for  hours  without  tiring.  Many- 
times  I  have  been  thankful  that,  since  I  had  to  be  eyes  for 
my  mother,  this  gift  was  mine.  In  looking  back  over  my 
life  it  is  easy  now  to  see  the  purpose  in  the  gift.  It  was 
intended  to  Hghten  the  affliction  of  my  mother  and  it  con- 
tributed to  the  mental  development  of  my  son." 

Parallel  with  this  home  life  of  love  and  cultivation, 
Quincy  Mills  had  another  life,  the  precursor  of  his  career 
as  a  man.  The  boy  going  to  school  enters  upon  the  first 
stage  of  that  duaHty  of  interest  which,  at  least  until  these 
modern  days,  was  the  most  marked  differentiation  of  the 
masculine  destiny.  We  have  already  had  a  glimpse  of 
Quincy  Mills  as  a  schoolboy  of  ten  at  South  Boston.  He 
went  to  school  in  Statesville  for  five  years  from  1894  to 
1899  and  there  he  always  led  his  classes,  a  wiUing  student 
whom  it  was  never  necessary  to  watch  or  to  drive.  There 
is  but  one  harsh  memory  of  this  time.  He  had  a  clash  with 
one  of  the  teachers  of  the  Statesville  graded  school.  It 
was  when  he  was  about  twelve  years  old ;  he  complained  of 
injustice  and  expressed  unwillingness  to  remain  in  the 
school.  His  mother  looked  into  the  charge  and  satisfied 
herself  that  there  was  ground  for  it.  She  therefore  re- 
moved him  to  a  private  school.  "The  change,"  she  ex- 
plains, ' '  was  absolutely  necessary ;  he  could  not  advance  un- 
der the  smart  of  unfair  treatment ;  you  had  to  earn  his  liking 
and  respect  if  you  wanted  him  to  work  with  or  for  you." 

He  seems  to  have  had  two  teachers  who  had  a  great 
effect  upon  him  and  upon  whom  he  made  a  marked  im- 
pression, Mrs.  Frances  Tunstall  Dowd  and  Miss  Laura 
Lazenby.  Both  ladies  have  written  their  recollections  of 
him  for  use  in  this  book. 

"It  was  a  pleasure  to  teach  Quincy  Mills,"  Mrs.  Dowd 
writes;  "his  intense  interest  in  his  studies  was  an  in- 


6o  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

spiration  to  the  teachers.  He  was  always  amiable  to  his 
fellow  pupils  and  his  wonderful  consideration  for  older 
people  always  impressed  me.  An  admirable  trait  was  his 
love  and  admiration  for  his  mother.  He  was  thorough  in 
work  and  never  sought  to  shirk  a  duty.  He  was  specially 
interested  in  Latin  and  had  one  of  the  brightest  minds 
that  I  ever  taught." 

Miss  Lazenby  contributes  several  illuminating  sketches 
both  of  the  boy  and  of  the  atmosphere  in  which  he  grew 
up.     She  writes : 

"A  bright -faced  boy,  one  of  fifty  in  a  crowded 
schoolroom  of  the  fourth  grade,  stands  out  prominently 
in  the  memory  of  his  teacher,  not  so  much  because  of 
the  things  he  said  or  did,  but  from  the  abiding  feelings 
created  by  his  personality.  There  had  been  foundation 
building-in  for  good;  it  was  borne  in  upon  the  observer 
that  the  silent  work  at  home  had  been  done  on  the  prin- 
ciple that  '  what  we  make  a  child  love  and  desire  we  make 
him  learn.' 

"He  was  an  honorable  'trusty.'  He  sat  in  a  back  seat, 
but  at  every  opportunity  he  was  at  his  teacher's  side  to 
talk  of  interesting  incidents  of  the  school  day  or  of  local 
events,  humorous  occurrences  generally.  Often  there  was 
a  vein  of  sly  mischief  in  the  chatter.  He  was  a  real  boy, 
full  of  life,  yet  he  had  such  a  clean-cut,  sensible  attitude 
toward  the  classroom  work  that  he  carried  cheeriness  even 
into  routine  drudgery.  He  went  over  much  of  his  lessons 
with  his  mother  and  frequently  shared  the  benefit  of  her 
teaching  with  his  companions.  Even  at  his  early  age  he 
showed  a  fine  appreciation  of  books.  His  love  of  the  best 
reading  was  characteristic,  a  product  of  his  home  guidance. 

"He  was  an  only  child,  a  great  misfortune  to  him,  his 
mother  thought,  but  he  learned  early  to  bear  himself  well 


A  Radiant  Memory  6i 

with  other  children.  He  knew  how  to  give  and  take.  But 
he  always  seemed  more  at  ease  and  happier  with  grown-up 
people. 

"A  walk  with  Quincy  and  his  mother  one  afternoon  in 
October  is  a  treasured  memory  of  mine.  To  one  who 
knows  October  in  the  Piedmont  section  of  North  CaroUna 
not  much  need  be  said  of  the  picture  or  the  atmosphere. 
His  ancestors  were  early  settlers  here  and  owned  much  of 
the  eastern  and  middle  portions  of  this  town  (Statesville). 
A  httle  spring  bubbled  up  from  a  hillside  and  the  rill  of 
crystal  drops  had  furrowed  a  tiny,  beautiful  channel  to- 
ward the  far-off  ocean.  For  more  than  a  mile  we  followed 
its  windings.  We  rejoiced  in  its  growing  motion,  we  noted 
the  erosion  of  its  banks,  we  gathered  flowers  and  watched 
the  gay,  winged  Hfe  along  its  borders.  We  came  to  his 
grandfather's  fishpond.  We  gathered  material  for  future 
study.  When  I  think  of  it,  I  am  reminded  of  Mrs.  He- 
mans's  lines: 

' '  Child  of  the  earth !     Oh,  lift  thy  glance 
To  yon  bright  firmament's  expanse, 
The  glories  of  its  realms  explore 
And  gaze  and  wonder  and  adore. 

"Only,  of  course,  it  was  not  the  glories  of  the  firmament 
we  were  enjoying  but  the  beauties  of  the  earth.  But  the 
ecstatic  feeling  was  the  same.  Quincy's  face  and  spirit, 
so  radiant  with  happiness  in  contact  with  nature  and  na- 
ture's God,  is  a  gracious  recollection  to  his  boyhood  teacher. 
I  love  to  think  that  now,  unhampered  by  earthly  limita- 
tions, he  has  a  perfect  enjoyment  of  the  glories  of  the  uni- 
verse, not  only  in  creation  and  preservation  but  in  re- 
demption." 

In  September,  1899 — the  day  was  the  23rd  or  24th— 
Quincy  entered  the  preparatory  school  at  Oak  Ridge, 


62  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

North  Carolina.  He  spent  but  one  year  there,  completing 
the  two  years'  course  in  that  time  and  making  an  average 
of  99  5/16  in  his  studies;  his  diploma,  qualifying  for 
entrance  into  the  University  of  North  Carolina,  was  re- 
ceived in  May,  1900.  Oak  Ridge  itself  is  a  tiny  village. 
There  is  just  the  group  of  school  buildings  with  a  few  stores 
and  homes.  Attendance  there  carried  with  it  no  change  in 
the  small  town  surroundings  amid  which  Mills's  youth  was 
passed.  The  experience,  however,  must  have  had  a  very 
great  effect  on  his  character.  It  will  be  gathered  that  he 
was  somewhat  a  homebound  child  down  to  this  change. 
Here  he  was  thrown  into  an  entirely  different  medium. 
He  was  grouped  with  boys  of  his  own  age.  He  had  to  live 
with  them,  adapt  himself  to  them  and  win  their  good  opin- 
ion and  friendship.  In  short,  this  was  his  first  apprentice- 
ship in  the  trade  of  being  a  man,  in  which  he  grew  up  a 
master  craftsman. 

At  the  time  of  his  graduation  from  this  school,  he  was 
only  sixteen  years  of  age.  He  looked  even  younger,  a 
mere  child;  so  his  parents  decided  it  would  be  best  for  him 
to  postpone  entering  college.  He  spent  the  winter  of  1900- 
190 1  at  home  in  Statesville,  with  the  intention  of  entering 
at  Chapel  Hill  in  the  fall  of  the  latter  year.  But  then 
came  the  first  serious  setback  of  his  career.  In  June,  1901 , 
he  fell  ill  with  typhoid  fever  and  was  long  in  recovering. 
When  the  time  came  for  registration  at  the  University  in 
September,  he  was  still  unable  to  sit  up  for  more  than  half 
an  hour  at  a  time,  and  he  had  to  be  lifted  from  his  bed  to  a 
chair  and  back  again.  Not  until  the  mid-winter  of  190 1-2 
did  he  gain  siifficient  strength  to  resume  a  normal  life. 
He  then  went  to  Florida  to  visit  the  family  of  Mr.  Hugh 
Mills,  his  father's  brother,  and  he  made  a  stay  of  from  two 
to  three  months. 

The  visit  was  marked  by  a  touch  of  romance ;  he  was 
now  eighteen  years  old,  the  age  of  sentiment.    His  mother 


Romance  of  a  Sonnet  63 

writes  of  this  episode:  "Some  time  before  this  he  had  been 
smitten  with  the  charms  of  an  unusually  pretty  and  viva- 
cious girl  friend  of  about  his  own  age,  the  'L.'  to 
whom  he  wrote  an  early  poem.  But  when  he  returned 
from  his  trip  far  south,  he  was  engaged  to  a  Florida  lass, 
who  was,  however,  of  North  CaroHna  ancestry,  a  descen- 
dant of  one  of  the  Mecklenburg  '  Signers. '  She  would  have 
made  him  an  admirable  wife,  and  many  times  I  have  re- 
gretted that  the  incHnation  grew  cold,  that  he  did  not 
marry  her  on  the  completion  of  his  studies  as  he  fully  in- 
tended to  do  when  he  entered  college.  But  I  know  that 
love  is  not  the  growth  of  human  will.  There  is  no  blame  to 
be  ascribed  for  the  natural  indecision  of  youth." 

The  poem  "To  L."  is  a  sonnet.  Though  written  and 
printed  in  Yackety-  Yack,  the  University  year  book,  in  1906, 
it  obviously  fits  in  here.    It  reads: 

To  L . 


Sweetheart,  I  mourn  that  with  a  face  so  fair 
A  heart  so  cold,  so  pitiless,  should  mate, 
That  doth  delight  to  scorn  a  lover's  prayer 
And  comfort  finds  with  mocking  at  his  fate. 
When  you  encourage  with  your  laughing  eyes. 
And  truant  locks  lure  on,  o'er  rosy  cheecks, 
My  hope  leaps  high — alas,  how  soon  it  dies 
When  confirmation  in  your  heart  it  seeks. 
Your  sweet-arched  lips  that  promise  to  caress. 
If  only  I  take  courage  to  go  on, 
Lose  in  a  trice  their  tempting  tenderness. 
And  with  your  frown  my  day-dreams  all  are  gone; 
Ever  my  fate  thy  glorious  self  to  see, 
My  hopes  for  crowns  to  wear  but  mockery. 

Even  at  this  early  period  the  boy  had  developed  some 
oddities  of  incHnation,  some  pecuHarities  of  taste  which 
remained  with  him  in  manhood.    For  instance,  he  was 


64  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

very  fond  of  purple.  At  the  University,  he  was  delegated 
in  his  freshman  year  to  choose  the  colors  for  his  class. 
He  selected  purple  and  white.  When,  later,  he  had  to 
drop  a  year  on  account  of  illness,  he  expressed  to  his 
mother  a  wistful  regret  for  the  loss  of  his  colors.  His  love 
for  thistles  was  not  strange  considering  his  ancestry. 
There  was  a  Scottish  tinge  to  his  surroundings.  The  fam- 
ily, the  community,  had  a  filial  affection  for  Scotland; 
many  old  Scottish  words  and  phrases  were  used  by  his 
grandmother  and  other  Statesville  residents.  Burns  and 
Scott  were  favorite  poets.  Mrs,  Mills  records  that  her 
father,  as  she  was  told  by  those  who  knew  him,  fre- 
quently recited  passages  from  both,  to  the  great  pleasure 
of  his  hearers. 

More  curious  was  young  Quincy's  fancy  for  the  cactus. 
He  so  liked  this  bizarre  plant  that  he  made  a  study  of  it  in 
his  school  days  and  a  collection  of  varieties  of  it.  Akin  to 
this  taste,  perhaps,  was  his  interest  in  gargoyles.  He 
studied  them  through  pictures  in  books  all  through  his 
life  and  we  find  him  attracted  by  specimens  he  saw  during 
his  war  days  in  France.  His  mother  says : ' '  We  had  an  old 
copy  of  W.  S.  Gilbert's  Bab  Ballads  illustrated  by  the 
author  with  queer,  gargoylish  pictures  which  caught  and 
held  Quincy's  fancy  when  a  tiny  boy.  The  ballads  had  to 
be  read  over  and  over  and  were  successful  rivals  of  the 
Mother  Goose  jingles.  In  after  years  the  Gilbert  and  Sulli- 
van operas  were  prime  favorites,  and  his  liking  for  the 
Ballads  persisted  to  the  end." 

In  fact  he  had  a  certain  love  of  the  grotesque  and  it  is 
not  strange  that  the  art  of  the  Spaniard,  Goya,  held  a 
strong  fascination  for  him,  although  he  placed  Rembrandt 
at  the  head  of  the  list  of  the  painters  of  all  time.  He  also 
had  a  liking  for  Egyptian  art  and  spent  much  time  over 
curios  from  the  land  of  the  Nile  in  museums  and  upon 
illustrations  of  them  in  books.     This  interest,  however, 


For  America  65 

indicated  no  general  fancy  for  trinkets.  He  positively  dis- 
liked jewelry  of  all  sorts  and  could  not  be  induced  to  wear 
a  ring  or  a  scarf  pin.  The  one  exception  was  the  ring  en- 
graved with  Masonic  emblems  which  he  bought  a  short 
time  before  sailing  for  the  battlefront,  and  the  purpose  in 
wearing  this  was  not  that  of  personal  adornment. 

Summing  up  the  period  of  the  childhood  and  early 
youth  of  her  son,  Mrs.  Mills  thus  comments: 

"Quincy's  sense  of  duty,  his  willingness  to  take  up  the 
responsibilities  of  life  developed  when  his  years  were  few. 
In  fact,  he  must  have  had  these  qualities  always  and  the 
family  circumstances  intensified  them.  His  contempt  for 
easy  self-indulgence  was  largely  due  to  the  self-denial  he 
had  to  practice  in  childhood.  Poverty  is  a  fine  discipline, 
and  one  thing  it  surely  does  is  draw  closer  the  family  ties 
when  parent  and  child  have  struggled  with  it  together. 

"I  have  never  known  any  other  child  who  had  Quincy's 
intense  patriotism.  His  country's  history,  her  welfare 
were  matters  of  thought  with  him  at  an  early  age.  He  was 
remarkable  in  this  respect.  Of  him  it  could  be  said  that 
he  never  saw  his  country's  flag  without  an  up-welling  of 
emotion.  In  later  life,  long  before  the  storm  of  19 14  broke 
upon  the  world,  America's  defenseless  condition,  the  need 
to  make  ready  for  emergencies,  made  him  uneasy  for  the 
future. 

' '  Often  he  used  to  rally  me  on  the  way  I  had  required  his 
strict  attendance  at  Sunday  school  and  church  services, 
until  he  was  well  on  in  his  'teens,'  pretending  he  had  been  a 
real  martyr.  He  always  ended  the  tirade  by  declaring  that 
when  he  had  children  of  his  own,  they  should  have  the 
same  training.  In  this,  he  was  much  like  his  great-grand- 
father McKee  and  his  grandfather  Sharpe,  who  were  never 
church  members  but  required  their  families  and  servants 
to  attend  religious  services,  and  gave  generously  to  church 
5 


66  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

support.  In  the  old  days  in  the  South,  every  church  had 
a  gallery  built  for  the  use  of  the  blacks." 

Quincy  attended  services  at  the  Trinity  Chiu-ch  in 
Statesville,  where  he  was  baptized,  regularly  until  he  left 
home  for  college.  He  formed  a  great  affection  for  the 
beautiful  Episcopal  ritual,  which  he  never  lost  although 
he  ceased  to  be  a  regular  church  attendant  after  he  came 
to  New  York.  Of  his  attitude  in  this  regard,  his  mother 
writes : 

"While  Quincy  was  not  religious  in  the  orthodox  way, 
he  lived  his  religion.  He  was  unselfish,  just,  simple,  brave, 
kind,  patriotic,  frank,  modest,  sincere,  loyal.  This  is  not 
the  blind  enthusiasm  of  a  mother's  affection  for  her  only 
and  lost  child.  It  is  as  careful  an  estimate  as  I  am  capable 
of  making  of  him  after  thirty-three  years  of  companionship. 
It  was  my  happiness  to  watch  his  mind  and  character 
develop,  and,  after  caring  for  his  dependent  years,  to  have 
the  privilege  in  my  turn  of  leaning  on  him  for  guidance 
and  help.  For  his  high,  ideal  qualities  were  balanced  by  a 
great  fund  of  common  sense  and  good  judgment  that  kept 
his  feet  on  the  earth  and  adjusted  him  safely  to  everyday 
life. 

' '  There  was  plenty  of  temper  to  add  spice  to  his  char- 
acter. If  his  wrath  was  excited  by  meanness  or  injustice, 
he  exploded  with  a  force  that  swept  away  all  conventions 
and  restrictions.  His  tongue  was  even  keener  than  his 
pen.  He  could  stab  to  the  quick  with  it.  He  could  be 
merciless  in  the  use  of  this  rapierlike  power  of  speech, 
but  he  never  turned  it  against  an  opponent  unless  he  felt 
the  chastisement  was  needed  and  deserved.  It  is  my  belief 
that  Sidney  Lanier's  poem.  Remonstrance,  expresses  his 
views  on  the  higher  subjects  of  thought  better  than  any 
words  I  could  supply." 


CHAPTER  III 

College  Days  at  Chapel  Hill,  N.  C. — An  Earnest  Student  Who  Was 
"One  of  the  Boys" — Footing  it  Through  the  Blue  Ridge — 
Verse  Grave  and  Gay. 

The  delay  of  a  year  in  Mills's  entrance  upon  college  life, 
owing  to  his  typhoid  attack,  was  a  sore  trial  both  to  him 
and  to  his  family.  The  retarding  of  his  career  was  a  grief, 
and  financial  difficulties  were  increased.  He  finally 
registered  at  Chapel  Hill  on  September  8,  1902,  and  took 
up  residence  at  the  University. 

The  University  of  North  Carolina  first  opened  its  doors 
in  1795.  We  have  already  seen  Mills's  claims  for  it  of 
historical  primacy.  It  possesses  a  fine  tradition  of  educa- 
tional standards  and  democratic  ideals.  The  buildings  are 
beautifully  situated  amid  a  park  of  several  hundred  acres. 
The  policy  of  the  trustees  has  been  always  to  restrict  the 
growth  of  the  town  of  Chapel  Hill,  the  seat  of  the  institu- 
tion, so  that  the  student  life  flows  amid  surroundings 
simple  and  tranquil  with  the  remote  spirit  of  the  country. 
The  region  is  lovely,  the  University  buildings  are  vener- 
able. The  atmosphere  is  untroubled;  it  invites  study 
and  reflection ;  it  is  well  fitted  for  the  young  man  who  takes 
his  work  seriously — dreadfully  dull,  it  may  be  added,  for 
those  who  are  in  search  of  mere  amusement  or  excitement. 
The  spirit  of  the  place,  as  it  impressed  itself  upon  Mills 
finds  utterance  in  some  verses  which  he  wrote  while  an 
undergraduate,  and  which  were  printed  in  the  University 
Magazine: 

67 


68  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

The  Well. 

Out  of  cool  depths  thy  waters  rise 

The  grind's  or  athlete's  thirst  to  drown; 

So  thy  fair  form  requites  our  eyes 

For  the  rude  buildings  that  about  thee  frown ; 

Thy  dome  and  pillars  full  of  grace 

Relieve  the  harshness  of  the  place 

And  form  the  campus'  crown. 

There  gathered  in  our  leisure  hours 

The  flight  of  time  we  little  heed ; 

Thy  font  and  fellowship  are  ours, 

Our  spirits  rise,  the  moments  speed ; 

The  laugh  rings  loud,  the  jests  pass  'round, 

The  campus  echoes  with  the  sound, 

All  hearts  from  care  are  freed. 

When  to  the  larger  life  we  pass. 

Where  other  joys  and  cares  abound, 

Though  we  are  lost  within  the  mass. 

Our  happiest  thoughts  in  thee'll  be  found; 

The  mighty  oaks,  the  deep-toned  bell. 

The  sun-flecked  campus  that  we  loved  so  well, 

Our  memories  cluster  'round. 

Should  we  drink  deep  Misfortune's  cup. 
Our  forms  lie  racked  with  sickness'  pain. 
Old  well,  thy  picture  will  come  up 
To  soothe  again  a  tortured  brain ; 
Faintly  we'll  hear  the  laughter  ring, 
Snatches  of  songs  we  used  to  sing, 
Thy  waters  flow  again. 

Then,  when  the  years  have  passed  away. 
One  last  draught  we  will  drink,  old  well, 
A  class,  though  thinned,  some  of  us  gray. 
As  we  bid  thee  a  fond  farewell; 
About  thy  font  we'll  stand  once  more, 
Recall  the  jests  of  the  days  of  yore, 
And  give  the  old  class  yell. 


Foremost  in  Work  and  Play  69 

Mills  entered  with  all  his  heart  into  the  life  of  the  Uni- 
versity. He  was  a  leading  figure  in  every  sphere  of  its 
activities.  He  was  an  eager  and  successful  student,  a 
leader  in  sports,  in  the  forefront  of  collegiate  literary 
pursuits.  He  made  friends  in  the  teaching  body  and  of 
classmates.  His  career  was  full  of  success  and  happiness. 
From  it,  he  retained  a  devoted  love  for  the  University  and 
he  left  behind  him  none  but  cordial  memories.  Recalling 
his  student  days  in  after  years,  he  said  that  four  of  his 
professors,  those  in  chemistry,  mathematics,  Greek  and 
English,  had  urged  him  to  specialize  in  their  respective 
subjects,  as  he  had  unusual  gifts  for  them.  Yet  he  came 
away  without  a  trace  of  pedantry  and  free  from  conceit; 
it  was  the  humorous  and  not  the  complimentary  aspect 
of  these  tributes  to  his  versatile  powers  that  appealed  to 
him.  He  was  deeply  in  harmony  with  the  tone  of  the 
place.  His  personality  assimilated  itself  to  the  grave, 
scholastic  atmosphere;  the  wealth  of  years  and  memories 
appealed  to  the  deeper  and  more  poetic  side  of  his  nature. 
In  another  copy  of  verses,  written  and  published  while 
he  was  a  student,  his  sentiments  of  affection  and  venera- 
tion find  voice: 

To  THE  College  Bell. 

When  with  the  twilight's  gathering  gloom 
Thy  clear  deep  tones  float  through  my  room, 

O  faithful  college  bell, 
Then  slips  my  mind  from  all  things  near 
To  dream  of  things  of  yester-year 

And  with  fond  fancies  dwell. 

Before  my  eyes  pass  shadowy  forms 
Of  mighty  men  who  through  the  storms 

Of  civil  strife  and  hate 
Gave  to  their  state  all  that  was  theirs, 


70  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

Both  goods  and  blood,  and  without  fears 
Were  proud  to  share  her  fate. 

They  trod  this  campus  which  I  tread, 
Heard  thy  pure  notes  swell  overhead 

To  call  to  them  each  day ; 
From  this  same  fountain  did  they  drink 
The  strength  to  nerve  them  not  to  shrink 

When  duty  showed  the  way. 

Old  bell,  may  each  full  mellow  note 
That  wells  from  thy  pulsating  throat 

Remind  me  of  these  men ; 
That  while  I  now  prepare  for  life 
My  aim  may  be  throughout  its  strife 

To  be  as  they  have  been. 

The  four  years  he  spent  at  Chapel  Hill  were  crowded 
with  activities.  Perhaps  there  is  no  better  way  of  giving  a 
concrete  idea  of  these  than  by  copying  here  from  the 
"Seniors'  Individual  Pictures"  section  of  Yackety-Yack 
(the  very  handsome  and  elaborate  year  book  of  the  Uni- 
versity) for  1907,  therecord  which  accompanies  his  portrait : 

MILLS,   QUINCY  SHARPE. 
Statesville,  N.  C. 

Yes;  I  write  verses  now  and  then. 

Age,  23;  weight  125;  height,  5  feet,  yj^  inches;  Di.  Society; 
Phi  Beta  Kappa;  Odd  Number  Club;  Modern  Literature  Club; 
Press  Association;  Magazine  Editor  (2,  3);  winner  Fiction 
Medal  (2);  Magazine  Prize  (2,  3);  Yackety-Yack  Editor  (3, 
4);  Editor-in-Chief,  Tar  Heel  (4);  Buncombe  County  Club; 
Vice-President  Class  (i);  Secretary  Class  (3);  Reader  Last 
Will  and  Testament  Class  (4);  Secretary  and  Treasurer 
Modern  Literature  Club ;  Tennis  Association ;  Captain  Tennis 
Team;  N.  C.  Club;  Y.  M.  C.  A. ;  Winner  Racket  Tournament 
(4) ;  Licentiate  in  French;  Journalism. 

"Q.  S." 


In  Comic  Vein  71 

A  small  but  weighty  parcel  of  literary  accomplishments  and 
sarcasm.  His  poetical  inclinations  do  not,  however,  keep  him 
from  being  numbered  as  "one  of  the  boys."  Another  one  who 
loves  to  argue  with  Horace  on  Ethics.  That  he  is  a  good 
student  is  shown  by  his  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Key  and  he  has 
worthily  succeeded  "  Vic  "  Stephenson  in  editing  the  Tar  Heel. 

Horace  was  Professor  Henry  Horace  Williams  of  the 
chair  of  Philosophy,  naturally  a  focus  of  argument.  The 
"Di."  was  the  Dialectic  Literary  Society,  one  of  the  two 
leading  student  organizations  of  the  University.  It  was 
founded  on  the  theory  that  "a  college  finds  its  best  repre- 
sentation, not  in  the  work  of  the  professor,  but  in  the  work 
of  the  student."  It  defines  its  objects  as  being  "to  en- 
courage honest  effort  in  debating  and  to  instill  a  spirit  of 
true  democracy  into  the  hearts  of  her  members."  Mills 
was  a  very  active  member.  He  was  elected  to  represent 
the  society  on  the  Board  of  Editors  of  Yackety-Yack, 
both  in  1906  and  1907  and  to  the  issues  for  both  years  he 
contributed  verses  and  prose  matter.  Some  of  the  former 
have  been  given  already.  Here  are  a  couple  from  the  1907 
book  in  lighter  vein : 

The  Maskers. 

Laughter  light-hearted  from  minds  untasked, 

The  maze  of  the  dance  around  me. 
And  forms  that  are  fair  with  faces  masked 

In  carnival  guise  surround  me ; 
The  touch  of  a  hand  in  the  mystic  ring. 
Of  a  waist — then  a  lip — what  matter? 
My  senses  whirl  with  the  song  they  sing 
In  time  with  their  footsteps'  patter — 
"To-day  is  good,  to-day  is  bright, 
For  to-morrow  what  care  we  ? 
Enjoy  the  present,  it  is  youth's  right — 
Forget  life  and  be  free ! ' ' 


72  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

A  Sonnet  to  T — C — . 

Oh,  Thomas  Cat !  with  midnight  howls  lugubrious 

That  rend  the  sessions  of  my  sweet  repose 
Your  frenzied  interjections  blasphemous 

Set  night  aghast,  electrify  my  doze. 
Safe  sconced  upon  the  fence,  in  eldritch  screech 

Or  wild  demoniac  yowl  you  revel ; 
Your  caterwauls  ring  loud  enough  to  reach 

The  awestruck  moon,  or  even  shame  the  devil, 
How  His  Satanic  Majesty  must  grudge 

Your  language  phosphorescent,  that  doth  make 
My  hair  stand  straight — nay,  Thomas,  I  must  judge 

You  his  own  mortgaged  subject,  doomed  to  bake. 
Ah,  Thomas,  could  you  only  talk  like  us 
With  what  exquisite  gusto  you  would  cuss ! 

Of  the  prose  contributions,  How  It  Looked  to  Hi,  which 
appeared  in  1906,  is  a  dialect  sketch  of  an  old  farmer, 
whose  boy  wanted  to  enter  the  University,  making  a  visit 
there  himself  to  see  what  it  was  like.  The  skit,  written  in 
true  college  vein  "to  please  the  boys, "  is  full  of  local  gags. 
The  old  man  describes  the  Campus.  As  he  saw  it,  it  was 
"a  tarnal  big  grove  all  split  up  with  paths,  an'  with  big 
buildin's  scattered  'bout  all  over  it."  Though  "it  wuz 
purty  nigh  nine  o'clock,  he  wandered  about  for  half  an 
hour  without  seein'  nobody  but  a  few  stragglin'  fellers 
that  looked  half  asleep  an'  a  couple  uv  fool  collie  dogs  that 
kepa-tearin'  up  an'  down  a-yelpin'  like  all  nation,  a-chasin' 
uv  buzzards'  shadders."  However,  he  presently  strayed 
into  a  building  and  a  room  where  "a  mournful  lookin' 
man  wuz  a-leanin'  'gainst  a  table  a-talkin'  to  'em  in  a  dole- 
ful voice."  Presently  "Hi"  asked  one  of  the  fifty  or  so 
listeners  what  the  man  was  talking  about  and  the  answer 
was  "Si  Kollergy, "  so  he  concluded  that  "Si"  must  be 
dead  and  they  were  mourning  him.     Soon  he  realized 


Literary  Apprenticeship  73 

that  the  sad  man  was  crazed  with  grief,  for  he  asked  such 
questions  as : 

"Why  don't  a  cat  have  wings?" 

"Which  comes  first,  the  hen  'r  the  egg?" 

"Why  can't  you  wear  your  right  glove  on  your  left 
hand?" 

The  next  morning,  "Hi"  concludes:  "I  tuk  Sam  over 
tew  the  big  clearin'  an'  I  set  him  tew  plowin'  a  furrer. 
An'  he's  plowin'  yit,  fer  my  mind's  made  up!" 

In  the  1907  edition.  Mills  has  again  a  comic  sketch, 
The  Mystery.  This  time  it  is  a  sleeping  car  adventure 
in  which  the  inevitable  pretty  girl  allows  one  of  her  stock- 
ings to  drift  over  to  the  keeping  of  the  handsome  young 
college  man,  in  company  with  a  blanket  which  the  porter 
obtains  from  her  berth.  Her  attempt  at  recovery  from  the 
young  college  man's  baggage  leads  to  unwarranted  sus- 
picion of  her  honesty.  The  journey's  end  brings,  introduc- 
tions, explanations  and  the  wedding  cake.  It  is  typical 
beginner's  fiction ;  Mills  was  feeling  his  way. 

Besides  Yackety  Yack,  Mills  gave  much  of  his  energy 
to  the  publications  of  the  University  Press  Association. 
In  1906  he  was  a  member  of  the  Board  of  the  University 
Magazine,  a  monthly  publication ;  in  1907,  he  was  editor- 
in-chief  of  the  Tar  Heel,  a  weekly  newspaper,  from 
which  one  of  his  editorials  has  already  been  quoted.  He 
was,  besides,  during  his  college  years  correspondent  for 
the  Charlotte  Observer  and  the  Richmond  Times-Despatch. 

His  intellectual  activities  did  not  pass  without  the  usual 
campus  sarcasm.  In  Drags,  a  collection  of  squibs  at  the 
expense  of  the  year's  graduates,  in  the  1907  Yackety-Yack, 
the  " MonopoHstic Triumvirate  of  Literature"  is  made  up 
of  "'Squincy'  Mills,  'Prof.'  Hughes  and  'Ray'  Logan." 
His  mental  combativeness  is  noted  On  the  Bulletin 
Board,  thus:  "The  Butting  Club  will  meet  tonight  at 
the  usual  hour— Q.  S.  Mills,  President." 


74  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

Election  as  editor-in-chief  of  the  Tar  Heel  is  a  distinc- 
tion reserved  for  Seniors.  It  is  the  highest  literary  honor 
attainable  at  Chapel  Hill.  In  Mills's  case  it  both  deter- 
mined his  career  in  life  and  came  to  him  as  the  result  of  a 
natural  propensity  for  writing.  He  himself  said  always 
that  it  sent  him  into  journalism ;  but  the  trend  was  there 
before  the  Tar  Heel  days.  His  studies  in  English  under 
Professor  Edward  Kidder  Graham  were  his  especial 
delight  and  soon  after  entering  college  he  began  to  produce 
stories  and  poems  that  gave  him  a  reputation  for  literary 
ability  with  the  faculty  and  among  his  fellow  students. 
He  came  to  the  decision  to  make  literature  and  journal- 
ism his  career,  he  told  his  mother,  alone  in  the  Tar  Heel 
editorial  room  in  the  winter  of  1906-7  without  consulting 
anyone.  At  the  same  time  he  made  up  his  mind  to  come 
to  New  York  in  search  of  a  fair  opening. 

Besides  his  work  in  English,  Mills  enjoyed  especially  his 
courses  in  history  with  Professor  Kemp  Plummer  Battle, 
LL.D.,  and  in  philosophy  with  Professor  Williams.  He 
considered  that  these  three  men.  Professors  Graham, 
Battle  and  Williams  were  profound  influences  in  his  life. 
Battle  and  Graham  appealed  strongly  to  his  heart. 
Williams  stirred  his  idealism  and  aroused  his  mind  as  did 
no  one  else  until  he  joined  the  editorial  staff  of  The  Evening 
Sun.  Of  the  three.  Professor  WilHams  is  to-day  the  only 
survivor.  Professor  Graham  became  President  of  the 
University.  He  and  Mills  maintained  an  intimate  friend- 
ship. How  close  it  was  may  be  judged  from  the  following 
letter : 

President's  Office 
University  of  North  Carolina 
Chapel  Hill,  N.  C. 
March  20,  1915. 

Dear  Mills  :  I  have  just  seen  in  the  paper  that  you  have 
had  a  boost  on  the  Sun.     I  am  certainly  glad  to  hear  of  it.     I 


A  Collegiate  Friendship  75 

haven't  heard  any  more  pleasant  news  for  many  a  day.  It 
will  give  you  every  possible  chance,  I  should  think,  to  go  even 
higher,  and  I  have  every  sort  of  confidence  that  you  will. 

I  wish  you  would  take  a  day  off  on  the  twenty-first  of  April 
and  come  down  to  my  installation  as  President.  If  I  could  have 
about  a  dozen  of  you  fellows  that  I  used  to  teach — or  I'll  make 
it  two  dozen — I  would  be  willing  to  let  all  the  college  presi- 
dents and  "stuffed  prophets"  go  somewhere  else,  and  we 
would  have  a  real  good  time  just  among  ourselves;  but,  of 
course,  one  cannot  arrange  things  as  one  would  like. 

I  wish  you  would  come,  or,  if  you  can't  come  then,  pick  out 
some  time  when  you  can  and  let  me  know. 

Sincerely  yours, 

Edward  K.  Graham. 

The  boost  Mills  had  had  was  his  transfer  from  the  re- 
portorial  to  the  editorial  staff  of  The  Evening  Sun.  Once 
again  reaching  into  the  future,  we  find  that  this  friendship 
was  a  lasting  one : 

Chapel  Hill,  N.  C,  March  7,  191 8. 

Dear  Quincy  :  I  enjoyed  one  of  your  letters  in  The  Evening 
Sun  very  much  indeed  and  am  going  to  begin  taking  The  Sun 
so  as  to  get  hold  of  all  of  them  that  you  write.  I  wish  that  you 
would  write  one  to  me  directly  or  to  the  editor  of  The  Alumni 
Review  for  publication  there.  You  know  the  sort  of  thing  we 
want,  of  course.  I  hope  to  get  enough  of  this  material  from 
Carolina  men  at  the  front  to  publish  in  the  form  of  a  Carolina 
book  at  the  end  of  the  war,  or  even  during  the  war.    .    .    . 

The  University  has  so  far  stood  up  well  under  the  shock  of 
the  war.  We  have  had  big  losses,  of  course,  but  there  has 
been  no  panic  or  uneasiness.  I  feel  that  so  far  everything  has 
gone  just  as  it  should  have  gone. 

With  every  good  wish. 

Faithfully  yours, 

Edward  K.  Graham. 


76  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

In  what  regard  Professor  Williams  held  his  former  pupil 
is  shown  in  a  letter  which  he  wrote  to  Mrs.  Mills  on  July 
31,  1920.  "Your  son,"  he  says,  "made  a  permanent  im- 
pression on  me.  I  remember  where  he  sat  in  my  lecture  room. 
He  was  what  I  call  the  intellectual  type  of  student :  that 
is,  I  have  every  year  a  small  number  of  students  who 
take  nothing  from  the  lecturer  until  they  see  it.  They 
break  through  the  words  at  once  and  search  for  the  mean- 
ing of  the  utterance.  They  digest  and  assimilate  the  con- 
tent and  pass  it  back  to  the  lecturer  as  Knowledge.  It  is 
a  joy  to  work  with  this  type  of  student.  In  this  class 
belonged  Quincy  Mills. 

"Such  students  are  the  leaders  in  life.  They  under- 
stand. When  a  young  life  like  this  is  broken  and  lost,  the 
public  suffers  as  well  as  the  circle  of  friends.  I  am  very 
glad  you  are  to  make  a  permanent  record  of  his  life.  I 
advised  Quincy  to  go  to  New  York,  feeling  it  was  his 
proper  sphere.  I  watched  his  work  and  took  the  keenest 
satisfaction  in  his  success." 

In  another  letter.  Professor  Williams  says:  "One  felt 
that  he  was  a  critical  listener  and  it  would  not  be 
prudent  to  attempt  any  smoke  screen  with  him.  The 
ball  must  go  over  the  plate  if  one  wished  a  strike.  I 
prize  such  a  student.  In  fact  he  seems  necessary  if  I  do 
my  best  work  for  the  class.  The  success  of  the  year's  work 
is  always  due  in  a  considerable  degree  to  this  type  of 
student.  Such  was  Mills.  His  presence  was  a  substantial 
contribution." 

Professor  Battle's  tribute  took  the  form  of  a  presenta- 
tion copy  of  his  History  of  the  University  of  North  Carolina 
in  two  volumes,  which  he  sent  as  a  gift  to  Mills  upon  its 
publication  in  1907,  along  with  heartiest  wishes  for  his 
welfare.  By  way  of  contrast,  it  may  be  well  to  refer  back 
here  to  the  assurance  in  the  Yackety-  Yack  record  that  he 


Close  Companions  11 

was  "one  of  the  boys."  He  was  full  of  the  spirit  of  jovial- 
ity ;  witness  this  bit  of  verse  from  that  very  same  volume 
that  very  same  year : 

A  Prescription. 

Break  a  nice  fresh  egg  or  two, 

Beat  them,  not  too  fast, 
Add  some  milk  and  sugar, 

Then,  not  least  though  last, 
Haul  the  cherished  bottle  forth 

Draw  its  stopper,  and 
Add  unto  the  mixture  straight 

As  much  as  you  can  stand; 
Use  the  same  internally 

Whenever  you  feel  blue. 
And  it  will  make  the  landscape  take 

Quite  a  different  hue. 

While  Mills  was  generally  popular  among  his  fellow 
students,  he  had  naturally  some  special  intimates.  Among 
these  were  S.  Wallace  Hoffmann,  another  Statesville  boy, 
S.  R.  Logan,  a  classmate  from  Montana,  who  is  now  Super- 
intendent of  Schools  of  Big  Horn  County  in  that  state, 
Harvey  Hatcher  Hughes,  sometime  lecturer  at  Columbia 
University  and  now  a  rising  dramatist.  Dr.  Ben.  Washburn, 
now  or  until  lately  doing  scientific  work  in  the  West  Indies, 
and  Roy  Brown  who  is  an  official  of  the  North  Carolina 
educational  system.  Of  these,  the  closest  to  him  were  Mr. 
Logan  and  Dr.  Hoffmann,  and  they  have  furnished  for  this 
book  much  interesting  matter  from  their  affectionate 
reminiscences  of  college  days. 

Mr.  Logan  only  learned  of  Mills's  death  almost  a  year 
after  the  event,  through  the  request  made  to  him  to  write 
his  recollections.  He  had  missed  in  191 7  the  Christmas 
letter  which  they  habitually  exchanged.  "Vaguely  un- 
easy, "  he  says,  "I  waited,  hoping  soon  to  hear  from  him." 


78  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

Mentioning  the  names  of  the  five  friends  just  given,  he 
goes  on:  "In  this  group,  Quincy  represented  at  once  the 
sharpest  wit  and  the  keenest  sympathy.  We  feh  the  incisive- 
ness  of  his  intellect,  the  directness  and  forcefulness  of 
his  programme  and  the  self-discipline  and  moral  com- 
petency which  sustained  him  and  stimulated  his  fellows. 
Because  there  was  none  of  that  aimlessness  and  careless- 
ness which  is  often  associated  with  the  intellectual  bril- 
liancy of  college  stars,  he  commanded  unusual  attention 
and  respect.  Duty  and  self-control,  combined  with  rare 
quickness  and  grasp,  made  him  a  personality  and  a  positive 
factor  in  the  institution.  Conspicuously  the  most  scholarly 
member  of  his  class,  he  found  time  and  inclination  to  use 
his  literary  talent  not  only  in  the  creation  of  fanciful  poetry 
and  clever  short  stories  but  also  in  aggressive  and  often 
deliciously  ironical  editorials  and  satirical  articles  dealing 
with  practical  and  immediate  questions  that  arose  from 
day  to  day,  in  the  literary  magazine,  the  college  newspaper 
and  the  students'  annual.  College  tradition  has  pre- 
served the  fame  he  acquired  as  an  editor.  For  two  or 
three  years  he  wrote  a  good  part  of  all  three  publications. 
Well  do  I  recall  my  pleasure  from  the  implied  compliment 
in  a  'drag'  some  campus  wit  put  in  the  Yackety-Yack, 
naming  three  aspiring  young  writers,  'the  vest-pocket 
edition '  of  Mills,  Hughes,  and  myself. 

"Quincy  himself  was  a  prolific  inventor  of  'drags.'  So 
much  so,  in  fact,  that  he  was  handled  with  somewhat 
apprehensive  considerateness.  He  became  so  playful 
with  his  literary  'butting, '  as  we  called  it,  that  he  earned 
from  his  intimates  the  soubriquet  of  '  The  Goat . '  By  virtue 
of  his  general  achievements,  he  had  already  been  knighted 
as  a  'Bull,'  a  title  by  which,  from  time  immemorial,  the 
citizenry  of  that  college  distinguishes  the  half  dozen  or  so 
men  whose  exploits  in  scholarship,  athletics,  or  forensics 
appeal  to  popular  approval. 


Militant  Democracy  79 

"At  home  in  any  social  group,  Quincy  resented  the  in- 
justice to  the  general  run  of  students  wrought  by  a  mo- 
nopoly which  certain  fraternity  groups  had  secured.  He 
planned  and  helped  to  promote  various  expedients  for 
enriching  the  social  life  of  the  students  as  a  whole.  He  was 
vigorously  democratic  and  social-minded  in  all  of  his 
reactions.  He  not  only  refrained  from  seeking  honors ;  he 
sought  to  avoid  class  and  college  offices  although  he  was 
militant  poHtically  in  behalf  of  his  friends  and  of  principles 
of  fair  play  and  efficiency. 

"Although  he  enjoyed  the  companionship  of  the  campus 
crowds,  he  had  his  living  quarters  far  removed  from  such 
distractions.  In  the  quietest  part  of  the  village,  in  a  small 
cottage  hidden  by  great  elms,  he  lived  alone.  There  he 
did  his  work  systematically  and  thoroughly.  There,  also, 
he  did  much  dreaming.  Certainly  his  surroundings  helped 
to  maintain  the  continuous  thread  of  that  inner  Hfe  which 
differentiated  him. 

"Sunday  afternoons  it  was  the  custom  of  the  five, 
occasionally  accompanied  by  others,  to  tramp  through 
the  woods  about  the  University,  sometimes  a  distance  of 
seven  or  eight  miles.  No  trail  or  stream  or  point  of  special 
charm  was  unknown  to  us.  We  always  knew  at  first  hand 
the  changing  aspects  of  those  wilds  through  the  seasons. 
Quincy's  enjoyment  of  outdoors  was  like  that  of  a  child, 
and  he  retained  its  impressions. 

"On  these  excursions,  sitting  on  the  pinnacle  of  a  cliff, 
lying  upon  a  bed  of  ferns  or  moss  in  a  background  of 
rhododendron  in  bloom,  grouped  about  a  mountain  spring, 
or  idly  casting  pebbles  into  the  shaded  pond  of  the  ancient 
grist  mill,  we  discussed  all  subjects  within  the  range  of 
experience  and  imagination.  The  purity  and  the  ideaUstic 
quahty  of  my  friend's  conversation,  as  I  look  back,  amaze 
and  delight  me.  It  came  to  be  that  these  oft-visited  spots, 
romantic,  historic,  peaceful,  legend-touched,  were  benedic- 


3o  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

tions  to  him.  The  woods  were  a  chapel.  There  he  found, 
perhaps,  sought,  the  exaltation  of  religious  experience. 

"Real  men  usually  try  to  cover  up  their  deeper 
emotional  impulses  with  a  light  and  jesting  manner.  It 
was  in  that  style  that  Quincy  brought  cheer  into  the  sick 
room  of  friends.  When  Ben  was  detained  for  several 
weeks  in  the  infirmary  with  a  very  bad  appendix  and  an 
icepack,  and  without  real  food,  Quincy  took  great  pains 
to  help  the  homesick,  stomach-aching  pal  to  appreciate 
the  excruciating  humor  of  the  situation.  He  succeeded  in 
giving  comfort.  With  similar  bedevilment  he  shortened 
the  hours  of  the  writer's  imprisonment  in  hospital,  al- 
though he  had  to  give  up  his  Christmas  holidays  to  do  it. 
Sleepless  portions  of  the  night  during  the  latter  part  of 
that  incarceration  we  spent  in  the  most  intimate  discus- 
sions of  religious  and  philosophical  problems. 

"I  gratefully  recall  how  satisfactorily  he  tormented  my 
keeper,  the  nurse,  for  me.  This  was  good  old,  distracted, 
sympathetic  'Appy  Apgar, '  whose  standard  expression  of 
sympathy  and  concern  consisted  in  administering  addi- 
tional quantities  of  salts.  As  I  remember  it,  practically 
all  the  credit  for  the  consolatory  banquet  for  the  unfor- 
tunates left  on  the  Hill  to  languish  through  the  Christmas 
recess  was  due  to  Quincy.  Certainly  he  compelled  my 
keeper  to  release  me  in  time  to  participate. 

"I  recall  an  episode  which  really  grieved  us  both.  A 
young  friend  of  mine  from  a  remote  section  of  the  moun- 
tains, a  freshman,  persistently  laid  himself  open  to  prac- 
tical jokes.  In  this  way  he  was  irresistible,  and  of  course 
the  pranks  were  forthcoming.  On  one  occasion  our  young 
friend  secured  admission  to  the  infirmary  under  circum- 
stances that  led  us,  and  also  the  doctor,  to  beHeve  that  he 
was  simply  giving  up  to  an  attack  of  homesickness.  The 
nurse,  sharing  the  diagnosis,  and  getting  an  excuse  in  a 
mild  reference  of  the  patient  to  distress  in  his  stomach, 


Going  by  Will  Power  8i 

placed  a  huge  and  powerful  mustard  plaster  over  the  length 
and  breadth  of  the  abdomen,  then  reported  his  act  to  us 
for  applause.  Poor  Pete  had  a  real  trouble  for  comparison 
with  what  we  considered  imaginary  ills.  I  thought  all  of 
this  funny,  and  I  published  a  jingle  greatly  exaggerating 
the  humor,  with  the  result  that  others  came  into  the 
bleachers  with  us  to  watch  the  game.  But  half  a  year 
later,  the  doctor  made  a  positive  diagnosis  of  consumption. 
While  Quincy  was  entirely  innocent  in  this  farce,  I  beheve 
he  experienced  severer  pangs  of  regret  than  did  we  guilty 
ones. 

"Quincy  wrote  for  the  Charlotte  Observer  a  full  account 
of  our  walking  tour  of  the  mountain  counties  in  North 
Carolina.  Of  slight  build  and  without  the  rugged  con- 
stitution that  results  from  grilling  athletics,  farm  work, 
and  the  like,  in  my  premature  judgment,  he  was  doomed 
to  fail  in  endurance.  Therefore  I  took  great  pains  to 
bolster  up  the  proposition  that  it  would  be  the  basest  dis- 
grace for  any  of  us  to  fall  back  upon  the  muscular  resources 
of  the  old  horse,  Stokes,  which  we  took  along  harnessed  to 
a  dilapidated  carry-all,  to  transport  our  cooking  utensils 
and  supphes.  But  it  was  I  who  fell,  and  not  Quincy. 
When  I  reached  a  certain  point  in  exhaustion,  I  preferred 
brazen  disgrace  to  further  tortxire  of  the  flesh.  Quincy 's 
superior  performance  was  not  due  to  strength  of  body  but 
to  the  unbending  pride  of  his  will.  At  times  he  drove 
himself  forward  with  mind-power  on  the  last  stretch  of  a 
day's  travel,  scorning  to  ride.  Through  those  weeks  of 
mud,  drenched  clothing,  weariness  and  the  irritation  of 
unchanging  companionship,  he  was  courteous,  cheerful, 
and  undaunted,  absorbing  the  views  from  the  mountain 
tops  and  reflecting  the  serenity  of  the  hills. 

' '  One  of  our  greatest  trials  was  the  'conservatism '  of  the 
third  member  of  our  party  who  husbanded  the  contents  of 
a  silver  flask  so  well  that  on  the  morning  of  the  last  day  of 


82  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

our  campaign  there  still  remained  nearly  half  to  shame  him 
(but  it  did  not).  It  was  his  custom  generously  to  un- 
stopper  the  flask  when  we  had  been  drenched  by  a  moun- 
tain storm  and  give  each  of  us  one  measured  teaspoonful, 
and  no  more.  On  the  last  morning  there  was  a  quiet  little 
insurrection.  While  the  owner  slept,  two  young  men, 
conscious  of  the  righteousness  of  their  cause,  rose  early, 
carried  the  precious  flask  a  distance  of  a  few  hundred  yards 
to  a  place  where  a  spring,  fringed  with  mint,  bubbled  up, 
from  the  mountainside,  and  there,  with  such  an  impromptu 
recipe  as  the  inspiration  of  the  occasion  afforded,  made 
some  sort  of  mint  julep.  Into  this  concoction  went  five 
times  the  usual  reenforcement.  This  ambrosial  cup  they 
succeeded  in  getting  pretty  well  drained  in  spite  of  its 
queer  taste.  Thus  fortified,  and  with  consciousness  of 
duty  done,  they  awaited  the  wrath  to  come. 

"In  searching  out  the  springs  of  his  soul  to  account  for 
the  fineness  and  nobility  of  Quincy's  nature,  I  come  always 
upon  the  vision  of  his  mother.  During  the  years  of  our 
intimacy,  at  college,  among  the  peaks  and  shadows  of  the 
Blue  Ridge,  in  the  throngs  and  excitement  of  New  York 
City,  Quincy  Mills  lived,  consciously  or  unconsciously, 
in  the  presence  of  his  mother.  The  persistence  of  this 
image,  the  tenderness  and  constancy  of  his  regard  for  her, 
this  was  not  only  the  beautiful  and  beautifying  element, 
it  was  a  key  to  his  character,  the  unfailing  motive  of  his 
life.  His  concepts  of  duty  and  service  and  of  love  and 
self-sacrifice  were  the  product  of  this  factor  with  his  daily 
experience  and  growth." 

Dr.  Wallace  Hoffmann,  like  Quincy  a  native  and  at 
present  a  resident  of  Statesville,  was  perhaps  the  closest  to 
him  of  all  his  college  mates.  There  was  a  great  renewal  of 
the  bond  when  the  Doctor,  though  also  well  above  the 
obligatory  age  of  service,  volunteered  for  the  war.    His 


College  Comrades  83 

maternal  ancestors,  the  Wallaces,  were  a  Jewish  family, 
long  settled  in  Iredell  County,  where  the  Doctor's  grand- 
father established  before  the  Civil  War  an  herbarium,  said 
to  be  the  largest  in  the  country.  Hoffmann  and  Mills 
entered  the  University  together  in  1902,  but  later  their 
courses  diverged  as  Hoffmann  specialized  in  botany  and 
pharmacy  with  a  view  to  managing  the  Statesville 
Herbarium.  However  he  gave  up  that  work  some  years 
ago,  studied  osteopathy  and  was  practising  in  his  home 
town  when  the  war  came.  The  War  Department  does 
not  recognize  osteopathy  as  a  medical  science,  so  he 
volunteered  as  a  private  in  the  army  and  as  such  went 
over  to  France.  It  was  a  fine  and  brave  act  and  caused 
great  joy  to  Mills,  which  he  expressed  ebulliently  to  Hoff- 
mann himself  and  to  all  their  friends. 

Dr.  Hoffmann  has  contributed  his  reminiscences  in  such 
form  that  it  would  be  both  difficult  and  a  pity  to  cut  them 
up  and  weave  them  piecemeal  into  the  narrative.  They 
are,  therefore,  although  some  violence  to  chronological 
order  is  the  result,  given  here  as  they  came  from  his  pen : 

"Q.S.»' 

By  S.  Wallace  Hoffmann. 

'Tis  sometimes  pleasant  to  rehearse, 
When  twilight  deepens  out  of  day. 

The  tinkle  of  a  tiny  verse, 

That  whiled  the  noontide  hours  away. 

'Tis  sometimes  pleasant  to  recall. 
The  friends  of  yesterday,  to-morrow, 

But  that's  a  pleasure — if  at  all — 
That  borders  very  close  on  sorrow. 

But  our  real  friends  are  not  in  any  sense  the  friends  of 
yesterday  only ;  they  are  our  friends  now  and  they  will  be 


§4  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

our  friends  to-morrow.  We  do  not  need  to  see  them  to 
know  that  they  are  with  us,  and  truly  does  this  apply  to 
Q.S. 

I  saw  him  last  in  New  York,  about  twelve  years  ago,  at 
which  time  we  had  one  of  those  satisfying  "What's-it-all- 
about?"  little  talks  that  bridge  the  years  of  absence  and 
put  one  right  with  his  friend,  until  the  next  time.  Followed 
ten  years  of  silence.  From  France,  June  12,  191 8,  he 
wrote : 

Dear  Wal:  Bully  for  you!  Mother  has  just  sent  me  a 
Landmark  clipping  in  re  your  entry  into  service.  I  hope  that 
little  time  will  pass  before  you  are  enabled  to  turn  your  talents 
to  more  account  through  a  commission.  We  certainly  need 
good  medical  men  in  the  army.  I  am  thankful  to  say  that  thus 
far  I  have  required  none  of  the  Med.  Dept.'s  attention  (I  here 
knock  on  wood)  but  I  would  as  lief  have  a  Boche  operate  on 
me  with  his  bayonet  as  be  treated  by  some  of  the  Med.  officers 
I  know. 

"  Go  to  sick  call  and  they  give  you  an  O.D.  pill  whether  you 
have  the  bellyache  or  a  broken  leg,"  is  a  saying  among  the  men, 
and  I  regret  that  it  is  too  nearly  true. 

I  have  been  up  front  for  three  months  and  more  and  have 
had  some  pretty  exciting  times  now  and  then,  but  I  am  still  all 
together.  Don't  believe  that  the  trenches  are  as  bad  as  some 
of  the  tales  make  them, — but  they  are  bad  enough  at  that. 

If  you  are  still  as  much  interested  as  ever  in  botany  you  will 
find  the  fields  of  France  a  treat.  I  have  never  seen  before  as 
great  a  variety  of  wild  flowers,  or  any  so  beautiful  as  these  here 
in  Lorraine.  I  hope  that  we  may  meet — though  not  that  I 
will  have  to  to  call  upon  your  professional  services — over  here. 

Until  then :  Goodbye  and  good  luck ! 

Mills. 

My  letter  to  him  in  answer  to  this  was  never  received, 
but  returned  to  me  just  before  I  left  France,  in  July,  1919, 
a  year  after  it  was  mailed,  and  the  envelope  was  stamped 


Frat  and  Non-Frat  85 

' '  Deceased.  "  However  I  knew  of  his  death  before  sailing 
for  France  in  August,  191 8. 

On  a  trip  to  Chateau-Thierry  I  noticed  a  familiar  face 
close  to  mine  on  the  army  truck  crowded  with  soldiers. 
It  was  Capt.  H.  H.  Hughes,  whom  I  hadn't  seen  in  fifteen 
years,  a  great  friend  and  constant  companion  of  Mills  and 
mine  during  our  college  days  at  the  University  of  North 
Carolina,  in  1903  and  1904,  and  of  course  our  memories 
took  us  back  to  the  times  that  had  been. 

I  remember  distinctly  the  trip  to  the  Hill  where  Quincy 
was  to  be  a  Freshman  and  I  to  be  enrolled  in  the  profes- 
sional school.  We  were  separated  when  the  Sophs, 
rounded  up  the  Freshmen  at  University  Station,  ten  miles 
from  Chapel  Hill.  The  crowd  didn't  care  to  hear  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  from  a  new  man,  so  I  was 
soon  released  and  permitted  to  mingle  with  the  bunch  that 
had  Q.  S.  for  the  center  of  attraction.  He  was  perched 
upon  a  pile  of  baggage  in  the  baggage  car  and  the 
assembled  multitude  were  learning  all  about  the  "Old 
Lady  from  Smyrna"  and  similar  celebrities — the  hazed 
apparently  getting  as  much  fun  out  of  the  performance  as 
the  hazers.  It  was  a  Fraternity  crowd  conducting  the 
entertainment  and  his  initial  performance  served  to  make 
Q.  S.  known  to  the  bunch  that  were  to  be  his  political 
enemies  during  his  College  years. 

At  the  University  of  North  Carolina  in  those  days,  spirit 
was  intense  between  the  Fraternity  and  the  Non-Frat. 
crowd  and  Q.  S.  was  usually  in  the  midst  of  things,  helping 
his  crowd  carry  an  election,  breaking  up  the  opposition 
caucus,  and  all  the  fights  that  went  with  class  politics. 
Most  of  his  friends  were  mine,  and  some  of  my  friends 
were  his.  He  was  not  a  good  mixer,  or  he  was  more  dis- 
criminating, depending  on  the  point  of  view. 

In  politics  he  was  an  ardent  fighter,  vice-president  of  his 
class  one  year,  Editor-in-Chief  of  the  Tar  Heel,  the  College 


86  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

paper,  played  his  part  in  helping  the  University  Magazine 
with  frequent  contributions,  and  in  the  publication  of  the 
annual.  Probably  there  were  a  number  of  other  honors 
that  fell  to  him  by  virtue  of  ability  and  good  work,  but  it 
is  not  of  this  that  I  want  to  tell,  but  of  the  man  at  his  best 
and  worst  when  playing  and  boning,  for  often  at  college 
studying  may  be  a  bad  habit. 

We  took  up  tennis  together  and  soon  were  evenly 
matched  and  spent  many  an  afternoon  in  hot  contest  on 
the  courts.  One  day  Dr.  Eben  Alexander,  the  Dean  and 
one  of  the  politest  men  that  ever  lived,  stopped  to  watch  a 
point  that  had  a  hard  time  to  decide  where  it  wanted  to 
stay — smash,  lob,  smash,  volley,  cut,  smash  and  repeat — 
and  at  last  on  his  court  the  ball  refused  to  bound.  Q.  S.'s 
racquet  dropped  and  he  was  about  to  say  something  when 
he  spied  "Alex."  Followed  a  moment  of  mildly  profane 
silence,  and  then  he  called  sweetly  across  the  net  to  me, 
"Well,  I  thought  it  anyway!"  and  as  Dr.  Alexander 
strolled  off,  his  shoulders  showed  that  he  understood  the 
proprieties. 

I  was  only  at  the  University  two  years  with  Quincy; 
during  this  time  and  on  later  vacations  we  were  tennis 
partners  or  opponents  whenever  occasion  presented.  You 
get  to  know  a  man  well  in  any  matched  contest,  and  Q.  S. 
was  well  worth  knowing.  As  a  partner  he  was  working 
for  the  team,  as  an  opponent  he  had  to  be  licked,  as  he 
never  quit.  If  he  won,  there  were  no  regrets;  if  you  won, 
you  knew  there  had  been  a  battle  and  your  opponent  had 
been  caught  trying.  He  knew  that  what  was  worth  doing 
was  worthy  of  considerable  effort,  and  so  he  became  presi- 
dent of  the  tennis  association,  champion  of  his  class,  and  a 
few  things  like  that. 

My  brother  joined  us  during  the  second  year  and  was 
thereafter  a  part  of  the  tennis  combination,  Q.  S.  being 
very  fond  of  the  "Beau  Mice"  as  he  nicknamed  the  kid. 


Old  Letters  87 

At  the  University,  being  in  the  professional  school,  I 
was  not  supposed  to  study,  so  spent  my  time  finding  out 
about  the  library  and  the  boys,  and  many  an  hour  was 
passed  in  Quincy's  room.  We  understood  each  other 
rather  well,  and  if  he  was  studying  I  would  pick  up  a  book 
and  read  quietly  for  a  while,  then  occasional  squeaks 
would  emanate  from  the  selected  rocking-chair.  If  his 
nerves  got  the  better  of  him,  or  the  studying  wasn't  going 
very  well,  he  would  look  up  in  exasperation  and  submit 
some  remarks.  I  would  pretend  to  be  entirely  oblivious 
to  what  it  was  all  about,  read  on  in  silence  for  a  while  and 
then  quietly  get  up  and  tiptoe  out  of  the  room.  Next  day 
he  would  come  around  and  we  were  as  good  friends  as  ever. 
I  think  that  we  never  definitely  quarrelled  over  anything, 
it  was  my  gift  to  be  unusually  exasperating  at  times,  and 
when  I  succeeded  in  trying  my  friends  to  the  point  of  a 
cussing-out  it  was  regarded  as  a  distinct  triumph  and  of 
educational  value. 

If  Q.  S.  had  a  box  from  home,  and  he  often  had,  there 
was  a  jolly  party,  and  he  was  usually  on  hand  at  the  return 
engagements  and  he  shone  both  as  host  and  guest.  We 
went  for  lots  of  long  hikes  and  picnics,  and  when  not  too 
busy  usually  managed  to  have  as  good  a  time  as  we  knew 
about. 

Here  are  a  couple  of  letters  from  Chapel  Hill,  that  bring 
back  memories  of  the  old  days : 

Oct.  I,  1905. 

My  dear  "  HoFF,"  I  have  been  intending  to  drop  you  a  few 
lines  ever  since  I've  been  here — but  you  know  what  intentions 
amount  to  at  College.  I  am  carrying  nineteen  hours  (Psych, 
included)  but  that  is  no  excuse,  for  I  haven't  done  a  decent 
hour's  work  since  I've  been  here.  I'm  going  to  let  up  on  the 
studying  proposition  this  year. 

Things  are  rubbing  along  very  smoothly.  The  Freshmen 
have  already  held  their  election  and  there  was  nothing  doing 


88  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

to  speak  of.  It  went  Non-Frat,  of  course,  and  now  the  Frat 
Booters  are  scraping  around  trying  to  hold  another,  but  it 
won't  amount  to  anything.  The  Fraternities  took  in  very 
few  initiates  this  year.  More  boys  got  butted  than  I  have 
ever  seen  turned  down  here.  The  present  class  of  Freshmen 
have  quite  a  contingent  of  Booters.  The  Sophs,  are  very 
weak.  They  have  done  absolutely  nothing,  and  the  Fresh- 
men are  beginning  to  believe  that  they  are  it.  Hughes  is  back 
and  I  am  certainly  glad  of  it.  We  either  play  tennis  or  take  a 
walk  together  almost  every  afternoon.  He  is  one  of  the  best 
eggs  ever. 

Our  outlook  in  the  football  line  is  not  as  bright  as  it  was. 
We  have  a  fine  coach,  Warner  of  Cornell,  but  the  material  has 
not  worked  up  as  well  as  we  expected.  Several  good  men  have 
been  hurt  and  altogether  the  outlook  is  not  very  bright  when 
you  consider  that  we  have  the  heaviest  schedule  this  year  we 
have  ever  had.  The  Thanksgiving  game  will  be  played  at 
Norfolk  this  year,  but  there  will  be  an  excursion  just  the  same. 
If  the  tariff  isn't  too  high  I'll  go.  However  I  may  make  a  trip 
to  Statesville  the  last  week  in  this  month  instead.  If  I  do  I'll 
fetch  along  my  tennis  racket  and  maybe  we  can  have  a  game 
or  two.     I've  picked  up  somewhat. 

Night  before  last,  Will  Houck,  Harry  Harrison  and  I  went 
out  on  a  fruit  raid.  It  sho'  was  dark.  We  stumbled  all  over 
those  Orange  County  Hills.  Will  stood  on  his  head  in  a  ditch, 
Harry  fell  in  a  branch  and  I  capped  the  climax  by  rolling  into  a 
gully  with  a  bag  of  pears  on  my  shoulders.  However,  I  have 
no  kick  coming.  I  can't  see  why  I  didn't  break  my  neck. 
At  present  I  have  nearly  a  bushel  of  pears  ripening  in  my 
trunk  and  there  will  be  something  doing  later. 

Sincerely  your  friend, 

QuiNCY  Mills. 

Feb.  17,  1907. 

My  dear  Wal,  Of  course  after  seeing  your  glorious  self  in 
your  natural  habitat,  the  bughouse,  it  was  like  receiving  a 
glass  of  cold  water  down  a  Fred  Pinkus  Collar  to  read  your 


Just  "Joshing"  89 

letter,  although  it  was  just  as  cranky  and  irresponsible  as  you 
could  ever  hope  to  be.  I  regret  that  I  have  not  said  epistle  by 
me  now,  but  in  the  rush  of  Metropolitan  life  at  the  Hill  I  have 
mislaid  it.  My  regards  to  the  "Beau  Mice"  just  the  same. 
No  I  am  not  woozy — even  if  Rae  Logan  did  lead  a 
German  on  the  third  floor  of  Mary  Ann  last  night.  You 
needn't  think  that  because  Hughes  had  to  hold  him  in  bed  all 
night  to  keep  him  from  choking  himself  to  death  on  German 
verbs  that  I  am  intoxicated.  Nay!  But,  as  I  was  saying  a 
moment  ago,  I  have  an  inkling  that  you  laid  yourself  out  to 
butt  me  in  said  epistle.  Don't  do  it,  pard,  don't  do  it,  give  up 
the  attempt.  Greater  men  than  you  have  tried  to  do  that  same 
thing,  and  failed.  It  takes  a  wise  man  to  get  the  laugh  on  a 
fool,  you  know. 

However,  subtracting  paper  amounts  from  your  reprimand 
in  proportion  as  Gethinklebug's  History  of  Civilization, 
Bothwhowsky's  Universal  and  Individual  and  other  similarly 
vicious  works  have  had  deleterious  effects  upon  the  attic  of 
your  anatomy,  causing  an  abnormal  swelling  of  the  bump  of 
altruism  and  other  alarming  results,  I  have  about  decided  not 
to  notice  you  at  all.  In  earnest,  though,  I  appreciate  your 
suggestions  as  to  the  propriety  of  using  certain  terms.  I  had 
never  thought  of  them  seriously,  for  it  is  very  seldom,  I  believe, 
that  there  is  a  suggestion  behind  them  that  is  meant  to  cut. 
Indeed,  I  believe  that  you  are  getting  into  the  way  of  consider- 
ing life  in  too  solemncholy  a  manner. 

Try  to  think — I  admire  your  spunk  in  making  the  attempt — 

but  don't  carry  the  effort  to  the  length  that has  done. 

He  has  been  trying  the  experiment  so  long  and  so  wildly  that 
I  fear  that  he  will  end  up  some  day  by  taking  to  grunting  and 
imagining  himself  to  be  one  of  his  prize  Berkshires — the  acme 
of  perfection  in  his  eyes,  you  know.  Take  warning  of  his 
example. 

But  I  have  bored  you  long  enough  by  this  rambling  disser- 
tation on  the  Lord  knows  what.  .  .  .  Besides  I  must  make 
some  Tar  Heel. 

Therefore,  "So  Long." 

Q.S. 


90  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

When  Quincy  was  a  Junior,  summer  vacation,  we  had 
the  most  perfect  camping  trip  in  the  rain  that  one  can 
imagine.  A  golden  time!  Replete  with  incidents  of  joy 
and  struggle  to  make  the  most  of  things — the  mountains 
(with  Rae  Logan  along  to  compare  them  with  his  intimate 
knowledge  of  the  Rockies),  and  makeshifts  to  enjoy  con- 
traband from  mint  julep  to  a  wonderful  oyster  soup  made 
out  of  canned  oysters  and  condensed  milk.  Then  there 
were  the  varied  efforts  to  make  sleeping  a  success,  such  as 
digging  a  ditch  to  keep  the  rain  from  washing  down  one's 
neck  when  sleeping  under  the  wagon.  This  followed  the 
attempt  of  four  of  us  to  sleep  in  the  same — a  covered  one- 
horse  affair  that  served  as  baggage-and-supply  transport — 
feet  toward  the  middle.  For  some  reason  it  wasn't  a 
success,  or  was  too  much  of  a  success  to  be  enjoyed — 
strong  smelling  lantern,  cheese,  straw  and  too  many  feet, 
with  the  three-legged  horse  tied  near  our  ears  and  adding 
to  the  pot-pourri.  Q.  S.  wrote  up  the  trip  for  the  Char- 
lotte Observer — Footing  it  Through  the  Blue  Ridge — but 
there  are  many  fond  memories,  that  could  never  be  written, 
of  this  wonderful  trip. 

In  some  letters  from  Hughes  around  this  time  I  find 
Q.  S.  mentioned  and  extracts  from  written  records  are 
more  accurate  than  any  memory  of  incidents  of  fourteen 
years  ago,  and  show  his  interest  in  things.    Here  are  some : 

Quincy  tells  me  that  you  played  tennis,  Xmas;  but  he  pre- 
serves the  silence  of  the  damned  in  regard  to  the  score.  Ben, 
old  measly  Ben,  you  remember  him — and  Quincy  and  I  went 
out  to  Polyfolium  Cliffs  (Ben  insists  on  calling  it  Pollyflodium) 
to  take  some  pictures.  I  wish  you  could  have  been  along;  we 
had  oceans  of  fun.  Quincy 's  tongue  was  out  by  the  time  we 
crossed  the  bridge  above  Purefoy's.  When  we  got  within 
about  ten  yards  of  the  top  of  the  cliff  (we  came  in  from  above) 
Quincy  threw  himself  flat  on  his  face  on  a  patch  of  moss  and 
groaned  for  joy.     Without  lifting  his  head  or  even  opening  his 


A  Generous  Censor  91 

eyes,  he  swore  it  was  the  most  beautiful  place  and  commanded 
the  finest  prospect  in  the  whole  state.  The  cliffs  were  cer- 
tainly in  their  glory  and  almost  merited  this  extravagant 
praise,  but  I  think  Quincy's  judgment  was  undoubtedly  influ- 
enced by  that  patch  of  moss  that  served  so  nicely  for  a  bed. 

Quincy  did  get  a  "leetle  tetched  in  the  head"  about  the 
Golden  Fleece.  But  it  was  nothing  serious.  He  didn't  want 
me  to  join  and  I  shouldn't  have  joined  if  the  organization  had 
been  what  he  thought  it  was.  But  like  a  great  many  other 
members  of  Horace's  Psych,  class  he  has  a  habit  of  generalizing 
from  insufficient  data.  The  Golden  Fleece  is  not  a  Fraternity 
in  the  sense  we  use  the  word  in  the  University  and  never  can  be. 
It  gives  you  a  chance  to  get  on  the  inside  of  things  that  no 
other  organization  affords. 

Quincy  and  I  took  Christmas  dinner  down  at  Dr.  C.  al- 
phonso  Smith's  and  enjoyed  it  immensely.  The  Doctor 
uncorked  some  of  his  choice  jokes — the  ones  he  keeps  on  tap 
for  all  occasions,  and  Q.  S.  and  I  both  laughed  ourselves  blue 
in  the  face  (He's  taking  15th  Eng.  and  I'm  takin'  14th). 

We  lived  in  the  same  town  and  that  a  small  one,  but  I 
have  no  distinct  recollections  of  Quincy  during  the  pre- 
college  days.  He  was  not  in  my  classes  at  school,  and  was 
at  preparatory  school  while  I  was  in  High  School.  Yet 
we  must  have  been  thrown  together  quite  a  little  in  the 
early  days,  as  I  can  dimly  recall  him  coming  to  bat  in  a 
ball  game  that  took  place  on  my  back  lot  twenty-odd 
years  ago,  but  it  is  the  neatly  fitting  sweater,  rather  than 
the  boy,  that  makes  the  picture.  I  knew  that  he  was  an 
only  child,  devoted  to  his  mother,  studious  to  a  marked 
degree,  and  nicknamed  "Quincy- Apron-Strings"  with 
that  cruelty  that  girls  and  boys  often  exhibit. 

It  was  characteristic  of  Q.  S.  to  want  to  correct  the 
faults  of  his  friends  as  well  as  commend  their  virtues 
(probably  rather  than  would  be  a  little  more  accurate,  not 
that  he  was  at  all  stingy  in  recognizing  good  quaHties), 
but  if  you  were  his  friend  and  these  were  known,  it  seemed 


92  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

up  to  him  to  help  out  a  Httle.  His  loyalty  was  marked,  and 
at  times  he  seemed  to  think  so  much  of  his  friends  that  he 
wouldn't  bother  to  be  polite.  If  one  didn't  know  him  well 
this  often  queered  things  a  little. 

His  Code  contained  laws  that  he  rigidly  adhered  to  and 
not  only  the  letter  but  the  spirit.  Not  only  would  he  not 
indulge  in  vulgarity  but  he  wouldn't  countenance  it. 

Life  to  Q.  S.  seemed  a  rather  simple  thing — do  the  thing 
to  be  done,  plan  ahead  and  be  prepared.  When  it  was 
written,  "The  end  is  forbidden.  Thy  use  is  fulfilled"  it 
was  given  to  Q.  S.  to  respond  largely  and  beautifully,  and 
as  I  would  have  expected  of  my  friend,  and  his  memory 
will  always  be  a  source  of  pride  and  exaltation. 


In  both  of  the  above  assemblages  of  recollections  and 
impressions,  stress  is  laid  on  the  Blue  Ridge  Mountain 
walking  trip  which  took  place  in  1906  when  Mills  was  a 
Junior  at  Chapel  Hill.  This  was  a  remarkable  expedition. 
Despite  his  zeal  as  a  student  and  his  multiform  literary 
activities,  Mills  found  time  and  energy  for  a  great  deal  of 
physical  activity.  He  was  too  light  for  a  football  player, 
but  he  was  an  expert  in  baseball  and  tennis.  He  played 
both  from  his  early  teens  and  was  a  pitcher  of  unusual 
quality  until  a  sprained  arm  put  him  off  the  diamond,  to 
his  deep  chagrin.  Then  he  took  to  tennis  in  earnest.  He 
was  a  star  player  at  the  University,  was  a  member  of  the 
Varsity  team  and  its  Captain  in  1907,  winner  of  two  prizes, 
and  College  Champion  in  1906  and  1907.  His  interest  in 
the  game,  indeed,  never  waned.  In  New  York  he  kept  in 
practice  until  he  went  into  the  training  camp  at  Platts- 
burg  in  191 7. 

But  walking  was  his  special  delight.  If  there  had  been 
prizes  for  tramping  at  Chapel  Hill,  he  would  have  won 
them  all.    He  took  tramps  that  would  have  knocked  out 


In  the  Land  of  the  Sky  93 

most  men — and  delighted  in  them.  The  endurance  he 
gained  from  this  habit  stood  by  him  splendidly  in  his  last 
great  adventure  in  France.  Sometimes  he  went  alone; 
often  he  had  companions  as  in  the  biggest  outing  of  all, 
the  days  spent  in  exploring  the  Blue  Ridge  Mountains, 
the  region  which  North  Carolinians  call  the  ' '  Land  of  the 
Sky."  This  time  the  party  was  four  in  number:  Mills, 
"The  Bo,"  "Loge"  and  "The  Kid."  "The  Bo"  was  Dr. 
Hoffmann,  who  spells  it  "Beau"  as  has  been  seen;  "Loge" 
was,  of  course,  Mr,  Logan  and  the  fourth  member,  "The 
Kid, "  was  Bate  Toms  of  Rutherfordton,  a  younger  lad, 
whom  the  others  picked  up  at  that  place,  the  real  starting 
point  of  the  tramp.  There  was  a  fifth  in  the  party,  the 
old  horse  "Stokes"  who  was  procured  for  them  by  the 
Kid.  The  start  was  held  up  for  three  days  in  the  effort  to 
acquire  him.  Mills  thus  describes  his  entrance  on  the 
scene : 

On  the  third  day,  as  we  quaffed  the  water  of  the  mineral 
spring,  enter  Stokes,  heralded  by  The  Kid  with  a  countenance 
beaming  with  the  conscious  joy  of  work  well  done.  The  rest 
of  us  did  not  beam,  and  he  who  could  have  viewed  Stokes 
without  some  misgivings  must  have  been  sanguine  indeed.  He 
limped  heavily,  his  breath  came  and  went  in  heaves  and  his 
ribs  stared  through  his  hide  in  a  way  that  spoke  painfully  of  a 
lack  of  oats  and  corn  in  his  diet.  We  held  an  ante-mortem 
consultation  about  him,  through  which  Stokes  stood  with 
downcast  head,  his  eyes  closed,  swaying  miserably  with  each 
breath,  utterly  unconcerned  as  to  any  disposition  that  might 
be  made  of  him.  Loge  was  the  veterinarian;  he  shook  his 
head  despondently  and  said  nothing.  There  was  nothing  else 
for  it,  however;  we  were  out  for  a  walking  trip,  but  we  had  to 
have  a  wagon  to  carry  along  our  kit,  and  it  was  necessary  that 
the  wagon  should  be  pulled;  therefore  it  was  Stokes  or  bust, 
and  as  he  did  not  expire  before  our  eyes  we  adopted  him  to 
complete  our  list. 


94  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

This  mock  pathetic  picture  of  the  old  horse  is  from  the 
first  of  Mills's  six  articles  in  the  Charlotte  Observer,  to 
which  Dr.  Hoffmann  and  Mr.  Logan  allude,  and  which 
reported  the  trip  in  alternate  outbursts  of  boyish  animal 
spirits  and  emotional  word  painting.  He  describes  the 
adventure  as  the  product  of  "Junior"  psychology.  He 
had  just  ended  his  Junior  year  and  an  idea  of  his  view 
of  himself  and  the  campus  life  is  gained,  when  he  remarks 
that  it  was  not  because  they  were  entirely  debilitated  by 
the  activities  of  the  year  just  passed  that  he  and  "Loge" 
decided  the  trip  was  "absolutely  necessary  to  their  peace 
of  body  and  mind."  He  explains  that  "the  Freshman 
works  because  he  does  not  know  any  better  " ;  by  the  time 
Sophomorehood  is  reached  he  has  learned  the  true  rela- 
tions of  books  to  college  life,  but  his  social  duties  as  ' '  un- 
questioned ruler  of  the  campus  absorb  all  the  energy  which 
the  Junior  may  devote  to  unalloyed  ease."  The  Junior  is 
"indeed  a  blessed  mortal";  he  is  freed  utterly  from  "the 
jag  of  conscience  "  and  so,  "from  a  maze  of  tobacco  smoke 
and  unconventionality  he  may  blissfully  gaze  on  the  life  of 
forced  bustle  and  self-importance  of  the  Senior." 

In  this  spirit  the  excursion  was  begun.  Sunlight  and 
boarding  houses  full  of  pretty  girls,  where  they  dined, 
brightened  the  first  half  day  for  the  four.  Then  they  ran 
simultaneously  into  rugged  country,  a  wild  thunder  and 
rain  storm  and  the  ford  by  which  they  were  to  cross  the 
Broad  river,  a  rippling  and  sparkling  little  stream  which 
charmed  them  in  fair  weather.  But  this  was  their 
experience : 

Down  and  down  we  went  in  a  succession  of  jolts  until  we 
could  hear  the  wheels  churning  through  the  running  water ;  it 
was  clear  that  we  were  at  last  approaching  the  ford.  But  we 
were  so  miserable  that  the  knowledge  made  no  impression  on 
us.  Our  oil  cloth,  an  improvised  top  of  sensational  coloration, 
had  proved  insufficient,  and  the  cloudburst  that  had  swept 


Spirit  of  the  Mountains  95 

upon  us  had  beat  through  in  a  fine  spray  that  deluged  the  con- 
tents of  the  wagon.  We  were  dripping  and  cold — with  no 
prospects  for  a  camp,  for  the  river,  swollen  already  by  the 
water  from  the  mountain  sides,  was  far  too  full  for  fording. 
Our  outlook  for  the  night  was  gloomy. 

Stokes  lunged  on  a  little  way  and  stopped ;  we  could  feel  the 
wagon  settle  slowly  under  us  and  knew  that  we  had  mired. 
It  was  pitch  dark  under  the  trees  and  we  strained  our  eyes  in 
vain.  Then  came  a  flash  of  lightning;  balls  of  fire  snapped  in 
the  air  about  us,  two  knobs  of  flame  glittered  on  the  tips  of 
the  hames  and  we  saw  Stokes  stagger  in  the  shafts.  Stokes 
was  only  stunned.  Lunging  forward  with  a  strength  of  which 
I  had  believed  him  incapable,  in  an  instant  he  stood  trembling 
on  firm  ground  again. 

This  was  perhaps  the  most  serious  actual  danger  that 
they  were  in,  but  they  had  plenty  of  discomfort  and  minor 
mishaps,  over  which  their  young  courage  triumphed  with 
laughter.  Mills  tells  it  all  in  such  detail  in  his  Charlotte 
Observer  articles  that  they  would  fill  forty  pages  of  this 
book.     Some  of  the  hardships  were  purely  ludicrous : 

Breakfast  done  we  faced  a  problem  previously  unthought  of. 
In  no  effusion  on  a  camping  trip  had  we  found  any  record  of 
the  washing  of  dishes.  The  Kid,  as  chief  of  the  kitchen,  de- 
creed that  each  man  should  wash  his  own  tin  plate  and  spoon 
and  cup.  These,  plus  a  knife  and  fork  apiece,  completed  our 
table  luxuries.  For  washpan,  we  had  abundance  of  clear 
water  at  a  pool  in  the  branch  by  the  roadside,  but  our  washpan 
had  no  hot  water  connections,  and  the  more  soap  we  applied 
the  slicker  grew  o^ar  tinware.  Finally  we  abandoned  the 
Octagon  and  took  to  plain  sand,  which  worked  better,  and 
when  we  desisted  we  were  well  satisfied  with  the  results — al- 
though I  have  a  notion  that  certain  particular  housewives  of 
my  acquaintance  might  still  have  shied  our  platters  out  of 
their  kitchen  windows. 

They  camped  ne?:t  for  a  couple  of  days  at  the  base  of 
Craggy  and  explore4i  all  the  surrounding  country,  bathing 


96  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

under  waterfalls  and  dancing  and  maybe  flirting  a  little  at 
night  with  the  boarders  in  a  nearby  hotel.  Incidentally,  a 
laundress  they  hired  "decorated  the  landscape  "  with  their 
underwear  to  the  edification  of  the  same  boarders.  Men- 
tion has  been  made  of  the  oilcloth  top  of  their  wagon.  It 
was  a  parti-colored  wonder;  every  strip  was  different  in 
hue,  to  the  delight  of  the  country  folk.  But  it  did  not  keep 
out  the  wet,  as  has  been  seen,  so  they  went  to  a  well- 
stocked  village  store  for  reinforcement,  which  they  got  in 
still  another  tint.  Now  the  Blue  Ridge  Mountains  were 
not  noted  for  their  prohibition  tendencies  in  these  days  any 
more  than  at  present,  nor  were  these  boys  prohibitionists. 
They  had  a  great  curiosity  and  Mills  tells  of  their  attempt 
to  satisfy  it : 

We  were  travellers  in  a  strange  land  and  we  wanted  to  see 
all  there  was  to  be  seen  of  its  wonders.  No  harm  was  in  us, 
positively  none,  but  was  there  not  a  chance  of  our  getting  a 
squint  at  one  of  the  original  blind  tigers?  The  mystification 
of  our  host,  the  merchant,  was  magnificent ;  it  took  him  fully 
twenty  minutes  to  comprehend  what  the  blockading  business 
meant.  Then,  after  much  cudgelling  of  his  memory,  he  found 
that  he  had  once  heard,  many  years  before,  of  a  party  down 
beyond  the  South  Carolina  line  who  dealt  in  wine;  that  was 
all  the  information  we  could  get.  Seldom  it  is  that  one  meets 
with  such  innocence;  we  gazed  upon  it  in  rapturous  awe! 

Yet,  just  around  the  bend  of  the  road,  we  met  a  citizen 
whose  legs,  even  at  that  early  hour  of  the  day,  were  danger- 
ously erratic  in  their  motion  and  whose  face  was  suffused 
with  a  certain  vague  expression  of  joy  as  he  nursed  along  a  jug 
of  the  brownest  shade.  We  did  not  disturb  his  bliss  to  ask, 
but  the  jug  beyond  doubt  contained  the  water  of  a  certain 
mineral  spring  of  which  we  had  heard.  The  further  we 
travelled  the  more  we  were  impressed  by  the  variety  of  marvel- 
ous effects  that  could  be  worked  by  simple  mountain  lithia 
water.   .    .    . 

While  we  could  arouse  no  overweening  interest  in  Bald 


Rumbling  Cave  97 

mountain,  or  over  the  relief  work  that  may  or  may  not  be 
depicted  along  its  seamed  and  fissured  southern  front,  from 
which  it  takes  its  name,  we  found  abundant  material  in  its 
history.  Some  twenty-one  years  ago,  at  the  time  of  the 
Charleston  earthquake,  old  Bald  created  quite  a  stir  in  its 
vicinity  by  emitting  deep  nunblings  and  growlings  from  the 
depths  of  its  caverns,  while  its  rugged  flanks  were  felt  to  shiver 
with  clearly  perceptible  tremors.  The  news  was  quickly 
spread  that  the  ragged  old  htmip  of  the  Blue  Ridge,  which  had 
lain  in  thoroughly  respectable  silence  through  so  many  genera- 
tions, was  in  reality  an  extinct  volcano,  and  might  be  expected 
to  spout  smoke  and  flame  from  its  crevices  at  any  moment 
and  inundate  the  land  with  lava  and  ashes. 

Then  indeed  was  there  fear  and  trembling  throughout  the 
region  for  many  miles  around;  from  every  hilltop  resounded 
the  voice  of  the  mourner,  and  in  each  valley  echoed  the  songs 
of  praise.  Revival  followed  revival,  and  from  Turkey  Hollow 
to  Panther  Ridge  there  remained  not  a  still  or  a  mashtub  to 
tell  of  the  errors  of  the  past. 

Nothing  happened,  however.  The  frost  came  and  still 
nothing.  What  naturally  followed  ?  There  was  the  corn  lying 
idle  or  the  precious  kernels  going  to  feed  senseless  cattle.  In 
the  changing  of  a  moon,  yea,  verily,  before  the  camp-meeting 
arbors  on  the  hillsides  had  been  rent  asunder  by  the  autiunn 
winds,  lo,  a  thin  column  of  smoke  arose  again  from  every 
hollow,  while  the  hard  grain  changed  slowly  to  liquid  joy. 

But  the  trampers  could  get  nothing  better  than  cider 
which  was  not  even  hard.  Presently  they  started  to 
explore  the  caves  in  which  the  region  abounds.  At 
Rumbling  Cave  in  Bald  Mountain  they  turned  from  a  far- 
flung  scene  of  lovely  country  into  a  tall  narrow  cleft,  just 
wide  enough  to  allow  them  to  enter  edgewise.  They 
advanced  warily  as  "Loge"  lit  the  lantern.  The  air 
streaming  from  the  depths  of  the  earth  chilled  the  perspir- 
ation on  their  bodies  but  not  their  ardor.  They  tried 
gallery  after  gallery  and  level  after  level  in  which  the  rocks 


98  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

were  cold  and  damp  and  the  temperature  frigid.  They 
were  stopped  everywhere  by  heaps  of  shattered  rock  block- 
ing the  way.  Some  of  the  downfalls  from  the  roof  were 
evidently  recent. 

Judging  from  appearance  another  fall  might  occur  at  any 
time.  The  whole  body  of  Bald  mountain  stood  cracked  from 
surface  to  centre  into  a  series  of  immense  perpendicular  clefts  of 
rock,  which  leaned  together  to  form  the  galleries.  Muffled  rum- 
blings have  issued  from  time  to  time  from  its  innermost  recesses 
to  be  reechoed  through  the  valley,  hence  the  name  that  came 
to  be  applied  to  the  hollow  in  the  cliff.  These  sounds,  it  was 
clear,  had  been  caused  by  the  grinding  together  of  immense 
slabs  in  their  shifting,  incident  to  the  settling  of  the  ridge. 

But  there  was  a  more  thrilling  experience  in  store  when 
they  penetrated  the  Bat  Caves  in  Craggy— one  of  the 
cliff -girt  giants  of  the  region — opening  on  Chimney  Rock 
Valley.  The  tramp  to  the  cave  mouth  brings  out  some 
delicate  bits  of  description,  inspired  of  a  hearty  zest  for 
nature's  charms.  In  one  place  the  explorers  found  "an 
angle  of  the  cliff  where  the  jagged  edges  of  a  rift  in  the 
rocky  wall  were  cushioned  clear  up  to  the  mountain's 
brow  with  the  darkest  of  green  moss,  bedewed  with 
sparkling  drops  of  purest  water.  Numberless  little  rills 
trickled  together  with  a  sound  subdued  and  inviting, 
suggestive  of  inexpressible  coolness  and  relief  to  the  thirsty 
traveler,  into  a  shallow  basin  on  a  shelf  just  at  elbow 
height."  The  wayfarer  might  drink  from  the  rills  and 
cool  his  brow  in  the  receptacle.  After  that,  "sordid  must 
be  the  mind  that  would  not  feel  a  vague  desire  to  roll 
luxuriously  in  the  dripping  green  curtain  of  the  cliff  from 
its  topmost  edge  to  the  dewy  lacework  at  the  foot." 
Unfortunately,  the  lining  of  the  curtain  was  ' '  quite  hard, 
not  to  mention  its  sharp  edges,  and  the  pool  too  shallow 
to  cushion  the  final  stoppage." 


Subterranean  Terrors  99 

The  cool  streamlets  of  Craggy  freshened  all  the  atmos- 
phere. The  explorers  came  on  a  "Blowing  Rock,"  dis- 
tinct from  the  more  famous  one  in  Wautauga  County, 
N.  C,  and  stood  breathing  the  chill  air  that  poured  from  a 
great  vertical  fissure  six  inches  wide.  At  last  they  came 
upon  the  mouth  of  the  Bat  Caves.  Around  it  "the  trees 
pressed  close  together.  Thus,  in  having  a  setting  of 
greenery,  the  galleries  differed  at  the  very  outset  from 
those  in  Bald  Mountain."  There  were  three  openings. 
The  boys  tried  them  all  but  found  no  sign  of  bats.  One 
led  into  a  cathedral-like  cave  of  Gothic  effect.  The 
second  was  unattractive. 

But  the  third,  winding  in  and  out,  over  and  around  great 
blocks  of  stone,  and  along  narrow  ledges,  risky  pathways  in 
the  blackness  of  the  granite's  heart,  opens  a  tortuous  way  well 
back  from  the  reach  of  daylight.  Through  this,  the  whole 
party  wriggled  and  crawled  after  "Loge,"  who  went  ahead 
with  the  light,  until  brought  up  short  at  the  edge  of  a  cliff 
which  seemed  to  drop  clean  off  to  nowhere. 

Linking  our  belts  together,  we  lowered  the  lantern  into 
the  abyss  without  catching  a  glimpse  of  its  bottom.  Failing 
thus,  we  sent  a  fragment  of  loose  stone  whirling  into  the  dark- 
ness. There  was  an  interval  of  silence,  then,  far  below  us, 
there  echoed  a  choking  splash  as  it  fell,  engulfed  in  some  subter- 
ranean pool.  Simultaneously  we  experienced  peculiar  prickly 
sensations  in  the  region  of  our  scalps,  and,  simultaneously,  we 
scrambled  back  from  the  yawning  mouth  of  this  black  well. 

Somehow  we  were  satisfied  with  cave  exploration,  and  felt 
perfectly  willing  to  grope  our  way  as  quickly  as  possible  along 
the  clammy  walls  to  daylight.  So  precipitous  was  our  haste 
that  we  narrowly  escaped  going  astray  in  a  blind  passageway, 
and  then  we  came  to  know  a  few  of  the  preliminary  thrills  that 
must  fall  to  the  lot  of  those  who  find  themselves  hopelessly 
entombed  in  such  dank  and  slimy  fastnesses  with  only  a 
flickering  torch  or  lantern  to  render  the  darkness  more 
impenetrable  around  them. 


100  One  Who  Ga^e  His  Life 

We  were  glad  to  get  back  to  the  entrance,  and  even  there 
we  found  ourselves  so  painfully  chilled  that  it  took  us  some  time 
in  the  shaded  pathway,  to  grow  even  reasonably  comfortable 
again.  In  fact,  our  blood  did  not  resume  its  usual  flow  until 
after  we  had  climbed  to  the  top  of  the  mountain  and  baked 
ourselves  on  a  rock.  It  was  hot  enough  there.  It  occurred  to 
me  that  a  dweller  on  this  portion  of  the  mountain's  back 
would  be  doubly  fortunate.  He  could  fry  his  eggs  on  a  natural 
spider  in  his  front  yard  and  freeze  his  ice  cream  simply  by 
lowering  a  bucket  of  custard  into  a  crevice  in  the  rock. 

We  considered  the  proposition  of  opening  a  real  estate  boom 
on  the  desirable  property,  but  gave  the  scheme  up  on  finding 
that  we  would  be  forced  to  construct  elevators  to  the  level  of 
the  summit  in  order  to  interest  prospective  victims.  When 
we  cease  to  be  juniors  and  find  ourselves  more  plentifully 
supplied  with  the  necessary  wealth  the  "Consolidated  Moun- 
tain Improvement  Company"  may  be  floated  still,  with  a 
special  blind  tiger  connection  in  every  pantry  as  a  drawing 
card. 

The  trip  continued  for  several  days  more  with  pleasant 
meetings  with  natives  of  the  mountains  and  summer  visi- 
tors, feasts  of  scenery  both  lovely  and  awesome,  comic 
mishaps  and  practical  jokes.  Mills  comments  on  the 
kindness  and  intelligence  of  the  mountain  people.  Their 
general  bearing,  he  says,  "gave  the  lie  direct  to  the  belief 
current  as  to  the  uncouthness  of  the  mountaineers.  In  re- 
gard to  the  good  looks  of  the  miountain  lasses,  we  found 
that  report  had  not  erred.  There  were  plenty  of  them  in 
every  hollow,  not  the  slender,  fragile,  flower-like  specimens 
with  complexions  indicating  a  short-lived  beauty  and  ill- 
health,  but  big,  strong  girls,  full  of  health  and  vigor,  rosy 
of  cheek  and  as  capable  of  enduring  mountain  tramps  as  we 
were." 

The  last  stopping  place  was  at  Lake  Toxaway  where 
they  found  a  fine  modern  hotel  and  the  "most  bounteous 
fare  supplied  for  the  most  bounteous  consideration." 


Cloud  Painting  loi 

Without  the  latter,  ' '  the  wanderer  might  as  well  be  in  the 
Sahara,  so  far  as  a  square  meal  was  concerned."  The 
people  who  made  it  a  mountain  paradise  evidently  thought 
that  "paradise  should  be  operated  on  a  paying  basis." 
The  day  was  Sunday ;  they  bathed,  notwithstanding,  in  the 
lake  and,  being  Juniors,  were  not  shocked.  Then  they 
toiled  three  miles  to  the  "gently  convex  summit"  of  the 
mountain.  They  found  a  long,  single-storied  frame  hotel 
on  it  and  climbed  to  the  roof  to  witness  a  sunset  which  the 
landlord  assured  them  was  one  in  fifty  in  point  of  glory. 
As  they  emerged  on  the  roof,  the  red  ball  of  the  sun  was 
just  sinking  behind  the  western  summits. 

Extending  up  into  the  vault  of  the  sky,  above  the  sunset, 
hung  a  drift  of  mackerel  formation,  its  fleecy  waves  tinged 
with  the  softest  gold  and  pink.  The  rolling  edges  of  the  cloud- 
bank  beneath  glowed  with  a  rich  crimson  as  if  fed  by  the  fires 
of  an  invisible  furnace,  while  the  extremities  of  the  bank  flared 
in  varying  shades  of  yellow  and  orange,  blended  everywhere  in 
crevices  and  on  isolated  shoulders  of  mist  with  spots  of  purple 
and  pink.  Out  in  the  east  one  solitary  cumulus  head,  riding 
alone  in  space,  shone  like  a  glowing  opal,  iridescent  in  the  re- 
flection of  the  glory  of  the  departing  day,  its  white  mass  turned 
into  an  ever  changing  variety  of  colors,  brilliant  in  the  amethyst 
setting  of  the  distance  beyond. 

Underneath  this  constantly  varying  panorama  of  color 
effects  stretched  ridge  upon  ridge  and  peak  upon  peak,  their 
tops  bathed  in  the  rich  glow  of  the  sunset,  while  at  their  bases 
from  the  cool  recesses  of  the  valleys  clutched  the  sinuous  gray 
line  of  the  mist.  Across  the  rank  upon  rank  of  summits  suf- 
fused with  the  glorious  light,  there  shot,  now  and  then,  the  dark 
shadow  of  some  lofty  peak.  Over  the  whole  of  Lake  Toxaway 
rode  a  downy  gray  coverlet  of  fog  shutting  off  from  view  the 
chimneys  of  the  inn,  and  folding  the  shadow  of  the  mountain 
into  early  rest.  Here  and  there  over  the  landscape  the  rare 
tinges  of  the  slowly  falling  sun  rested  bright  on  spire  and  house- 
top in  some  mountain  town.     And  always  the    lights  were 


102  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

changing,  assuming'  new  hues  and  showing  the  clouds  in  vary- 
ing proportions,  like  figures  in  the  lens  of  some  gigantic 
kaleidoscope. 

The  scene  kept  them  on  edge  until  it  faded  out  to  a  mere 
flush  in  the  west.  Then  they  were  recalled  to  lower  strata 
by  the  smell  of  hot  fried  chicken.  "It  was  the  crowning 
feature  of  our  trip,"  says  Mills.  The  next  day  they 
started  for  home.  They  rejoiced  that  "the  incontroverti- 
ble force  of  junior  logic  had  brought  the  jaunt  to  pass." 
It  had  toned  up  their  nervous  systems  "to  render  true 
service  in  the  battle  of  bluff  of  our  (their)  senior  life." 
Its  impressions  and  experiences  sank  into  their  spirits  and 
acted  as  a  lasting  tonic.  His  vivid  story  of  it  intensified 
Mills's  desire  for  a  pen  career. 

In  the  reminiscences  of  Mr.  Logan  and  Dr.  Hoffmann 
allusion  has  been  made  to  the  fraternity  fight  in  the  Uni- 
versity and — in  Mr.  Hughes's  letter — to  the  Order  of  the 
Golden  Fleece,  of  which  there  was  a  branch  at  Chapel  Hill 
and  which  Mills  evidently  placed  in  the  "frat"  group. 
As  Dr.  Hoffmann  puts  it,  he  "was  so  strongly  democratic 
and  anti-fraternity  that  he  was  ready  to  go  to  the  mat  with 
anything  that  resembled  a  'frat. ' "  According  to  Hughes, 
the  Golden  Fleece  was  an  organization  much  broader 
than  the  Greek  letter  fraternities,  having  for  its  object  the 
improvement  of  University  life.  But  he  had  stood  with 
the  anti-frat  bunch  and  Mills  seemed  to  think  he  was 
deserting  the  colors.  When  they  entered  the  University 
in  1902,  the  students  were  sharply  divided  into  two  carnps 
on  this  question.  Naturally  the  fraternities  had  no 
attraction  for  Mills.  He  had  already  developed  somewhat 
extreme  democratic  ideals  and  he  regarded  them  as  foster- 
ing an  exclusive  and  snobbish  spirit  out  of  keeping  with 
true  Americanism.  He  threw  in  his  fighting  spirit  from 
the  beginning  with  the  anti-fraternity  faction.     As  his  in- 


Anti-Frat  Crusading  103 

fluence  grew,  he  became  a  formidable  figure  in  college 
politics. 

The  Yackety-Yack  for  1903,  the  year  after  he  entered, 
contained  a  strong  statement  of  the  anti-frat  position,  in 
which  this  passage  occurred: 

It  is  in  college  politics  that  the  lines  are  most  strictly  drawn 
and  the  fire  most  rapid  between  the  frats  and  non-frats.  As  a 
result  of  these  contests  the  non-frats  boast  that  today  they 
enjoy  by  far  the  larger  share  of  political  spoils.  They  have 
the  presidencies  and  many  of  the  chief  offices  of  all  the  aca- 
demic classes.  The  editors-in-chief  and  business  managers  of 
both  the  Magazine  and  the  Tar  Heel  are  non-frats.  Three  of 
the  sub-marshals  are  of  this  element. 

But  the  proudest  boast  of  the  non-fraternity  men  is  not  the 
reaping  of  honors  in  college  politics,  but  that  in  every  phase  of 
university  life  "where  men  rise  by  might  of  merit"  non-frats 
are  found  in  the  majority.  For  the  past  three  years,  half  of 
the  men  whose  scholarship  has  entitled  them  to  membership  in 
the  Alpha  Theta  Phi  have  come  from  the  non-frats ;  out  of  the 
twelve  men  who  have  represented  the  University  in  inter- 
collegiate debates  during  the  past  three  years,  eleven  have 
been  non-fraternity  men.  For  the  past  three  commencements 
all  but  two  of  the  commencement  orators  have  been  non-frats 
and  upon  each  of  these  occasions  a  non-frat  has  borne  away 
the  Mangum  medal. 

In  athletics  they  break  even  with  their  fraternity  college 
mates,  although  many  of  them  find  abundant  exercise  in  some 
employment  by  which  they  are  paying  their  way  through 
college,  and,  consequently,  are  not  found  on  the  athletic  field. 

Alpha  Theta  Phi  was  the  organization  of  honor  men  at 
the  University  in  earlier  days.  Some  time  between  1903 
and  Mills's  entrance,  it  was  superseded  by  Phi  Beta 
Kappa.  Throughout  Mills's  time  in  college,  the  anti- 
fraternity  lead  in  distinctions  of  all  sorts,  both  academic 
and  athletic,  continued,  nor  has  it  materially  changed 


104  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

since.  The  share  Mills  took  in  the  struggle  has  been  well 
defined  by  Mr.  Logan  in  his  reminiscences.  He  was  not 
in  college  politics  from  any  selfish  motive.  The  Yackety- 
Yack  summary  has  shown  how  few  offices  he  held  either 
in  his  class  or  in  the  numerous  organizations  to  which  he 
belonged;  yet  he  was  popular  enough  to  have  had  any- 
thing he  wanted.  His  membership  in  the  Buncombe 
County  Club  is  an  illustration  of  his  status  in  this  respect. 
He  had  no  personal  link  with  Buncombe  County;  but  all 
the  members  were  so  much  his  friends  that  they  insisted 
on  having  him  among  them. 

So  we  have  a  picture  of  him  working  and  playing  alike 
with  strenuous  enthusiasm.  Few  youths  of  his  age  have 
ever  lived  a  fuller  life.  Rather  small  and  light  but  wiry, 
with  wavy  hair  and  calm  eyes  sometimes  lighting  up  and 
dancing  with  mirth,  a  fluent  and  entertaining  talker,  an 
easy  companion,  yet  with  a  great  capacity  for  silence,  for 
reserve  and  for  contemplation,  he  had  a  distinction  and  a 
promise  that  his  contemporaries  fully  recognized.  His 
own  view  of  college  life  and  work  is  fairly  set  forth  in  a 
letter  to  his  father,  written  February  28,  1906,  in  his  junior 
year.     Apologizing  for  infrequent  writing,  he  says: 

If  a  man  has  any  ambition  at  all  in  college  or  wishes  to  de- 
velop himself  in  any  special  line,  he  has  mighty  little  time 
after  he  gets  to  be  a  junior.  The  regular  college  work  does 
not  amount  to  nearly  so  much  as  it  does  during  the  first  two 
years.  I  do  not  put  more  than  a  third  as  much  time  on  my 
books  as  I  did  formerly ;  the  balance  goes  to  the  magazine  or 
some  other  outside  work.  This  outside  work  is  what  counts 
for  the  most  and  will  be  of  most  value  in  after  life.  The  man 
who  shuts  himself  up  between  the  lids  of  his  books  while  here 
certainly  loses. 

But  in  spite  of  hard  work  and  many  occupations,  his 
temperament  led  him  constantly  to  poetic  expression. 


Verses  Tragic  and  Tender  105 

One  curious  feature  of  his  verses  at  this  time  was  his  vision 
of  the  sea  swept  by  storm.  He  had  never  made  a  sea 
voyage,  but  he  had  lived  by  the  ocean  during  his  stay  in 
Florida,  and  it  is  reasonable  to  conjecture  that  he  derived 
his  inspiration  and  his  material  from  observations  at  that 
time.  His  imagination  must  have  been  much  stimulated 
to  compel  such  expression  as  this : 

The  Norther. 

When  over  the  sea  the  north  wind  comes 

Loud  is  the  tempest's  roar; 
Over  the  waves  the  cloud-banks  loom, 
On  the  harbor-bar  the  breakers  boom, 

Tossed  is  the  ocean  floor. 

Out  on  the  deep  the  good  ship  reels 

Under  the  flying  gale, 
Loud  and  long  each  straining  mast 
Groans  in  the  grip  of  the  driving  blast, 

Far  streams  each  storm-rent  sail. 

Now  in,  now  out,  her  gallant  keel 

Churns  in  the  seething  flood. 
Buffet  on  buffet  the  billows  deal. 
Until  the  shuddering  sailors  feel 

A  shock  that  chills  their  blood. 

The  north  wind  conquers ;  once  again  , 

The  vessel  rears  her  bow. 
Pauses  proudly  an  instant,  then 
Plunges  deep — the  hurricane 

Rules  supreme  master  now. 

But  his  verses  were  by  no  means  always  so  tragic  in  tone. 
Gentler  passions  also  had  a  place  in  his  soul.  The  lines 
which  follow  have  a  touch  of  mystery  about  them.  No- 
body now  can  tell  the  identity  of  "K."     He  never  spoke 


io6  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

of  any  such  sweetheart  to  his  mother,  his  universal  con- 
fidant, and  "K."  was  not  the  initial  of  anyone  whom  he 
was  known  to  admire.  "Perhaps,"  Mrs.  Mills  remarks, 
"this  was  just  the  ideal  of  his  dreams."  The  verses 
appeared  in  the  Magazine: 

To  K . 


Locked  in  the  secret  chamber  of  my  heart, 

From  every  stain  and  blot  of  life  secure, 
I  guard  thy  portrait,  sacred  and  apart. 

As  long  as  hope  and  ardent  love  endure. 
Tender  and  gentle  brimming  o'er  with  grace, 

With  eyes  that  brighten  with  the  purest  love, 
A  delicate,  fair  beauty  wreathes  thy  face 

That  glows  with  radiance  given  from  above. 
And  so  thy  image,  seen  as  by  a  veil, 

An  airy  mist  obscured,  smiles  on  serene 
Through  sun  and  shower,  brightening  all  the  dale 

Of  life  with  gladness — my  beloved  queen. 

My  heart  as  naught  the  troubled  present  deems — 

I  worship  thee,  sweet  lady  of  my  dreams ! 

In  the  sonnet ' '  To  L. "  it  has  been  seen  he  could  be  bitter. 
He  could  also  be  sweet.  And  then,  he  had  his  moods  of 
free  laughter,  as  witness: 

The  Assistant  Chemistry  Man. 

De  chemistry  'sistant  man,  boss. 

In  chief  is  what  I  is, 
I  breshes  de  lab  an'  keeps  it  straight 

An'  tends  to  all  de  biz. 

I  likes  to  watch  de  gemmans  work, 

A-fiddlin'  wif  deir  viles, 
A-messin'  roun'  wif  little  pots 

An'  cur'  some  sorts  of  iles. 


Success  Through  Study  io7 

Dey  mixes  stuff  in  little  chubes 

An'  puts  it  on  to  bile, 
An'  raises  'n  awful  mighty  smell 

In  jest  a  little  while. 

Sometimes  dey  makes  some  big  mistakes 

An'  mixes  sump'n  wrong, 
An'  den,  crack-bang,  jest  see  'em  jump! 

De  debbil's  loose  'fore  long. 

For  my  part,  I  hain't  got  no  time 

To  only  more'n  tell 
Erbout  dese  iles  whut  eats  your  close 

An'  floors  you  wif  deir  smell. 

'Deed,  boss,  I  never  teches  'em 

Or  takes  'em  in  my  han' 

Huccum  I  needs  to  when  I  is 

De  'sistant  chemistry  man? 

But  while  Mills  wrote  for  all  the  college  publications 
and  for  outside  newspapers,  while  he  played  tennis  and 
politics,  while  he  walked  and  dreamed,  while  he  went 
through  the  usual  strains  and  pains  that  drill  the  youthful 
heart  to  lasting  loves,  he  never  lost  sight  of  the  fact  that 
the  aim  of  his  University  years  was  to  acquire  an  edu- 
cation. There  are  in  existence  many  well-thumbed  blank 
books  full  of  his  notes  of  lectures— English  literature, 
history,  philosophy,  scientific  branches.  These  cover  his 
work  both  at  the  Oak  Ridge  Preparatory  School  and  at  the 
University.  They  show  that  faculty  of  seizing  the  ' '  high 
lights  "  of  any  subject  and  the  systematic  array  of  material 
which  made  him  later  a  good  newspaper  man.  Industry 
and  conscientiousness  are  written  all  over  them. 

His  thesis  in  philosophy,  dated  April  28,  1906,  has  the 
odd  form  of  a  fictional  narrative  of  the  moral  rescue  of  a 
young  man  of  lax  tendencies  through  grief  and  intro- 
spection.    It  was  labeled  The  Proving  and  on  the  fly- 


io8  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

leaf  Professor  Williams  made  this  endorsement:  "The 
paper  interests  me.  Add  analysis  to  description.  To  do 
this,  master  Psychology.  H.  H.  W."  It  is  an  interesting 
bit  of  psychology  in  itself,  showing  the  domination  of  its 
author  by  the  element  of  conscience,  modified  always  by 
the  love  of  life  and  joy  of  living. 

There  are  also  extant  a  number  of  the  formal  reports 
sent  by  the  University  authorities  to  his  parents.  The 
marks  indicate  high  standing.  On  the  report  for  1903, 
Dean  E.  Alexander  endorsed  these  words ;  "An  excellent 
student;"  in  1904,  he  wrote:  "An  uncommonly  fine 
student;"  in  1905,  "A  splendid  report."  The  whole 
outcome  of  his  academic  work  is  summed  up  in  the  fact 
that  when  he  graduated,  he  carried  off  with  him  a  Phi  Beta 
Kappa  Key,  the  hallmark  of  American  scholarship. 

The  graduation  did  not  take  place  until  June  4,  1907, 
five  academic  years  from  his  entrance.  The  reason  of 
this  was  that  in  January,  1904,  while  in  the  Sophomore 
class  he  had  an  attack  of  measles  which  had  the  common 
effect  of  leaving  him  with  weakened  eyes.  On  February 
19,  he  wrote  from  Chapel  Hill  to  his  father  at  States- 
ville  apropos  of  a  breakdown  in  the  health  of  his  grand- 
mother.    After  speaking  of  this,  he  goes  on : 

When  I  wouldn't  agree  to  come  home  right  after  I  got  well 
— or  rather  got  up,  for  I  am  still  rather  grouchy — I  told  you 
that  I'd  let  you  know  if  I  had  any  trouble  with  my  eyes.  I 
have  had  none  so  far  as  pain  is  concerned.  However,  my  eyes 
seem  to  be  very  much  weaker  than  I  thought  they  would  be 
and  than  they  appear  to  be.  .  .  .  Although  they  look  about 
the  same  as  ever,  they  run  what  seems  to  be  merely  water 
whenever  I  use  them  long  enough  to  get  up  a  lesson  and  it  is  im- 
possible for  me  even  to  stay  in  a  room  with  electric  lights.  These 
symptoms  are  more  marked  than  they  were  early  in  the  week. 

Now  it  has  taken  a  lot  to  make  me  arrive  at  this  conclusion, 
but  I  have  finally  decided  that  I  have  no  business  at  Chapel 


A  Wish  Superseded  109 

Hill  any  longer.  Although  I  have  had  only  about  half  as  much 
work  as  I  carried  before  Christmas  during  the  past  week  I 
have  been  unable  to  do  it  with  any  degree  of  benefit  or  satis- 
faction to  myself.  It  therefore  stands  to  reason  that  I  will  be 
unable  to  keep  up  my  work  later  on.  I  think  that  you  and 
Mother  will  agree  with  me.  ...  It  may  be  that  if  my 
glasses  were  refitted  I  might  be  able  to  stay  here.  However,  I 
would  have  to  take  a  risk  that  I  am  unwilling  to  take.  There 
is  only  one  experiment  that  will  tell  what  is  wrong  and  I  am 
perfectly  candid  in  saying  that  I  am  afraid  to  try  it.  That 
experiment  is  staying  on  here  and  working. 

I  will  not  worry  over  my  hard  luck.  Everybody  has  to 
have  a  little.  ...  It  is  mighty  hard  to  pull  out  and  leave 
but  it  is  about  the  only  sensible  thing  I  can  do.  My  time  will 
not  be  thrown  away  as  I  want  to  go  to  work  pretty  soon  and 
stay  at  it  until  I  come  back. 

He  went  back  in  January,  1905,  and  had  no  more  hard 
luck.  In  Yackety-Yack  for  1907,  he  left  a  few  lines  which 
sparkle  with  the  high  spirits  of  the  Commencement 
season : 

A  Wish. 

When  to  reunion  I  return 

Just  ten  years  from  to-day 
I  hope  to  find  things  just  the  same 

As  when  I  went  away, 
That  to  my  comrades  I  may  turn 

And,  smiling,  to  them  say : 
"Yes,  everything  is  just  the  same — 

Same  old  campus,  same  old  well, 

Same  old  jaybirds  raising  hell, 
You  bet  I'm  glad  I  came!" 

When  the  time  for  the  reunion  came,  Mills  was  at 
Plattsburg  working  for  his  commission,  and  fully  em- 
barked in  the  great  adventure  which  was  at  once  the 
fruition  and  the  sacrifice  of  all  his  years  of  preparation. 


CHAPTER  IV 

A  Bold  Step  and  its  Success — Ingenuous  Bohemianism  of  a  Young 
Newspaperman  in  New  York — Development  of  a  Critical  Mind 
— Plays,  Politics  and  Philosophy. 

It  has  been  seen  that  before  his  graduation  Mills  had 
made  up  his  mind  upon  two  points  as  respects  his  active 
life.  He  had  decided  to  enter  upon  newspaper  work 
either  as  a  career  or  a  stepping  stone  and  he  had  resolved  to 
make  his  start  in  New  York.  After  Commencement  in 
June,  1907,  he  went  home  to  Statesville.  He  remained 
there  all  the  summer,  helping  in  his  father's  business  and 
resting  and  building  up  his  health.  In  September  he  was 
ready  for  the  plunge. 

No  small  courage  was  needed.  He  was  already  in  debt 
for  the  greater  part  of  the  expenses  of  his  college  course  and 
he  was  obliged  to  borrow  again  to  cover  the  cost  of  his  new 
expedition.  He  could  have  become  at  once  the  editor  of 
the  Rohesonian,  a  weekly,  published  at  Lumberton, 
Robeson  County,  N.  C,  or  he  could  have  had  a  position  as 
reporter  on  the  Charlotte  Observer,  then  a  very  brilliantly 
edited  and  successful  newspaper,  for  which  he  had  already 
done  much  work  in  the  line  of  special  articles  and  news 
correspondence.  The  opening  was  a  fair  one,  near  home, 
and  the  pay  would  have  been  about  as  good  as  he  could 
hope  for  as  a  beginner  in  New  York.  He  could  also  have 
had  a  position  as  a  reporter  in  Philadelphia.  However,  on 
New  York  his  eyes  were  set  and  he  was  not  to  be  turned 
aside  from  his  plans  or  his  ambitions. 

no 


Settled  in  New  York  m 

The  start  seems  to  have  been  made  on  September  23  or 
24,  1907.  A  letter  written  from  Hamlet,  North  Carolina, 
is  dated  the  25th  and  shows  that  he  had  made  some  stop- 
over to  attend  to  business  for  his  father.  He  had  been 
entertained  by  friends  in  Charlotte  and  expected  to  make 
other  visits  on  his  way  to  Norfolk,  whither  he  was  headed 
to  take  the  steamboat  for  New  York.  He  began  to  meet 
friends,  college  mates  and  others,  on  the  train  and  this 
experience  repeats  itself  again  and  again,  through  all  his 
records  down  to  the  end  in  France.  He  took  in  the 
Jamestown  Tri-Centennial  Exposition,  which  was  then  in 
progress,  but,  on  the  whole,  was  bored  by  it — by  all  of 
it  except  the  historical  display.  Arriving  in  New  York 
on  the  28th,  he  went  directly  to  No.  115  Washington 
Place,  a  boarding  and  rooming  house,  kept  by  a  Miss 
Jarmen. 

This  was  by  no  means  Mills's  first  experience  in  New 
York.  In  1897,  when  he  was  thirteen  years  of  age,  his 
father  had  occasion  to  pass  a  winter  there  on  business. 
Mrs.  Mills  and  Quincy  spent  the  months  of  January  and 
February  with  him.  Owing  to  the  blindness  of  her 
mother,  Mrs.  Mills  could  not  remain  away  from  States- 
ville  for  a  longer  time.  Again  in  1905-6  Mr.  Mills  stayed 
for  several  months  in  New  York  and  Quincy  spent  a  month 
of  his  vacation  in  1 905  with  him.  Mrs.  Mills,  who  also  came 
North,  remained  with  Mr.  Mills  until  March,  1907.  Then 
a  tangle  in  business  obliged  them  to  return  to  Statesville, 
and  they  were  there  at  the  time  of  Quincy's  graduation. 

Among  the  acquaintances  Mr.  Mills  made  in  New  York 
in  1906  was  that  of  Mr.  John  Doohan,  a  young  Irishman 
who  had  lately  arrived  in  New  York  from  Hartford,  Con- 
necticut. Both  were  lonely;  they  became  very  good 
friends  and  he  remained  a  frequent  visitor  of  the  family  for 
several  years.  Mr.  Mills  wrote  to  him  when  Quincy  was 
coming  to  New  York  about  accommodations,  and  he 


112  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

secured  a  room  at  Miss  Jarmen's  where  he  himself  was 
staying.  Mr.  Doohan  figures  frequently  in  Quincy's 
letters  as  a  sympathetic  companion. 

The  story  of  Mills's  early  days,  indeed  of  his  first  year  in 
the  big  city,  is  told  in  his  letters  home,  in  which  he  gives 
ingenuously  all  the  details  of  his  life,  his  work  and  play, 
with  many  criticisms  of  men  and  things  that  reveal  his 
expanding  mind.  Mr.  Doohan  steered  him  about  the  city 
and  kept  him  from  growing  lonely.  He  spent  just  a  few 
days  in  getting  his  bearings ;  then  he  addressed  himself  to 
the  trying  task  of  job  hunting,  as  he  called  it.  To  aid  in 
his  quest,  he  had  a  number  of  introductions  and 
recommendations.  Mr.  R.  W.  Vincent,  the  Managing 
Editor  of  the  Charlotte  Observer,  sent  him  a  personal  letter 
of  the  friendliest  kind,  urging  him  to  continue  contri- 
buting, especially  to  the  approaching  Christmas  issue,  and 
enclosing  a  cordial  endorsement,  of  which  this  is  the  text: 

"Charlotte,  N.  C,  September  30,  1907. 

To  Whom  It  May  Concern: 

Mr.  Quincy  S.  Mills,  with  whom  the  writer  has  been  ac- 
quainted several  years,  possesses  journalistic  talent  to  a 
marked  degree.  During  his  career  at  the  University  of  North 
Carolina,  he  served  The  Observer  as  news  correspondent — the 
best  the  paper  ever  had  at  that  institution — and  was  a  fre- 
quent contributor  to  the  Sunday  issues.  His  articles  have 
been  widely  read  and  admired,  and  critics  have  yielded  to  him 
literary  ability  of  a  high  order.  His  most  recent  contribution 
to  the  paper,  "Footing  It  Through  the  Blue  Ridge,"  has 
excited  universally  favorable  comment,  and  The  Observer  has 
never  printed  a  more  excellent  narrative  of  adventure. 

Mr.  Mills  is  a  conscientious  student  and  a  prolific  writer. 
Personally  he  is  a  young  man  of  irreproachable  character  and 
sterling  worth.  I  esteem  it  a  privilege  to  commend  him  to 
anyone  seeking  the  service  or  companionship  of  a  cultured 


Landing  a  Job  113 

Christian  gentleman  and  predict  for  him  a  brilHant  future  in 
the  profession  that  he  has  chosen  and  which  he  will  adorn. 

Robert  W.  Vincent, 
Managing  Editor,  The  Observer. 

Mills  had,  besides,  letters  to  Mr.  Ochs  of  the  Times  from 
Dean  Alexander;  to  Mr.  Ralph  Graves  and  Mr.  R.  E.  Mc- 
Alamey,  influential  newspaper  men,  from  Mr.  Graves's 
brother,  Louis;  to  Hammond  Lamont  from  the  late  Profes- 
sor Baskerville,  recently  of  the  New  York  City  College  but 
then  of  the  North  Carolina  University,  and  to  Mr.  Jesse 
Lynch  Williams  and  others  from  the  Rev,  LeRoy  Gresham, 
Pastor  of  the  Presbyterian  church  at  Chapel  Hill.  It  does 
not  appear,  however,  that  he  presented  any  of  these 
credentials.  He  went  his  own  way  about  seeking  employ- 
ment. He  marched  into  the  newspaper  ofhces  and  asked 
for  an  opportunity.  On  October  5,  he  wrote  to  his 
mother:  "So  far  I  have  no  job,  but  you  are  not  to  be 
discouraged  by  that.  I  am  far  from  it."  He  had  in 
fact  secured  a  promise  of  a  place  on  the  Times  whenever 
there  should  be  a  vacancy;  it  became  a  mere  matter  of 
waiting.  He  could  have  had  an  immediate  opening  in 
commercial  lines,  but  decided  to  wait. 

However,  in  an  envelope  postmarked  October  7,  7:30 
P.M.,  he  characteristically  enclosed  a  visiting  card  on  one 
side  of  which  was  written : 


Q.  S.  Mills 

The  N.  Y.  Sun 

The  Charlotte  (N.  C.)  Observer 


This  was  on  the  other  side : 

Now  comes  the  hardest  part  of  all — making  good.  I  will 
make  good,  or  there  will  be  no  buttons  not  ripped  off  my  pants. 
Love  to  Papa  and  yourself.     Particulars  later. 

Q. 


114  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

The  card  was  not  quite  accurate.  It  was  The  Evening 
Sun  and  not  The  Sun — then  a  very  important  distinction 
— ^in  whose  service  he  had  found  a  billet.  He  remained 
a  member  of  its  staff,  latterly  on  leave  of  absence  for 
duty  in  the  war,  to  the  day  of  his  death,  eleven  years 
later. 

In  a  letter  dated  October  8,  he  tells  how  it  came  about. 
He  writes  to  his  mother:  "I  guess  you  have  sufficiently 
recovered  from  the  first  shock  to  take  the  rest  of  it.  I  had 
no  other  introduction  than  my  nerve.  I  thought  that,  as 
I  was  going  to  use  said  nerve,  I  would  strain  it  right  at  the 
start.  Therefore  I  went  down  to  Park  Row."  He  went 
to  the  Tribune  first  and  found  "the  boss"  out  at  lunch,  so 
he  went  next  door  to  the  little  old  redbrick  building  of 
The  Sun.  He  was  "turned  down"  by  the  City  Editor  of 
the  great  sheet,  but  went  one  flight  up  to  the  queer  rookery 
in  which  at  that  period  The  Evening  Sun  was  daily 
hatched.  He  says:  "I  blew  in,  pulled  out  my  card  with 
The  Charlotte  Observer  inscribed  thereon — and  was  ac- 
cepted." He  stated  his  case  to  Mr.  Charles  P.  Cooper, 
the  Managing  Editor,  showed  Vincent's  letter  and  said  he 
was  a  Southerner,  born  and  bred.  "I  was  asked  what  I 
wanted.  My  reply  was,  'A  chance.'  'Well  sir,'  was  the 
answer,  'you'll  get  it.  Report  at  8  o'clock  to-morrow 
morning  for  work.  Your  salary  will  be  fifteen  dollars  a 
week!'     I'm  here." 

The  next  day,  he  writes  again,  telling  of  the  wonder 
of  his  new  companions  as  to  how  he  did  it.  Mr.  Cooper 
had  "turned  down  "  four  applicants  on  the  four  preceding 
days.  Mills  concludes:  "I  guess  I  happened  to  strike 
him  in  the  right  mood  and  with  the  right  impression." 
Mr.  Cooper,  who  is  now  a  professor  in  the  Columbia 
University  School  of  Journalism,  being  asked  about  the 
incident  for  the  purposes  of  this  book,  wrote  that  he  could 
not  recall  the  particulars.    He  went  on: 


Personality  Won  115 

I  will  hazard  the  guess  that  it  (his  acceptance  of  Mills) 
was  due  to  personality  alone  for  in  the  old  days  we  gave  little 
heed  to  introductions.  Mills  very  early  made  himself  one  of 
the  "good  men"  and  our  relations  from  first  to  last  were  most 
cordial.  I  treasure  to  this  day  a  card  which  came  to  me  at  the 
Times  office,  while  the  war  was  on,  from  Mills.  Our  paths 
had  taken  different  directions  for  a  long  time  and  I  had  no 
idea  that  he  ever  had  me  in  mind,  when  this  card  reached  me 
bearing  friendly  greetings  from  the  war  area  in  France.  It 
was  only  a  little  later  when  the  news  reached  us  that  he  had 
perished.  With  all  of  his  former  associates,  I  cherish  his 
memory. 

From  his  commencement  of  work,  many  of  his  letters 
are  written  on  "copy  paper,"  some  in  pencil,  scribbled 
between  jobs  of  news  getting  and  writing.  Cub  reporters 
were  cheap  in  those  days,  but  it  is  astonishing  how  much 
the  boy  did  with  that  fifteen  dollars  a  week.  He  assured 
his  parents  that  his  pay  card  would  not  long  remain 
at  that  small  figure. 

However,  for  the  moment,  his  anxiety  was  not  as  to  a 
raise  but  to  hold  the  job  he  had  so  boldly  won.  He 
watched  the  first  and  second  week's  pay  days  with  acute 
misgivings  and  many  succeeding  ones  with  a  gradually 
diminishing  nervousness.  He  was  as  modest  an  adven- 
turer as  ever  braved  fortune  with  his  pen  in  a  New  York 
newspaper  office.  But,  in  fact,  he  was  never  in  any 
danger.  Everybody  liked  him.  The  copy  desk  gave  him 
reassuring  hints;  people  higher  up  threw  him  words  of 
encouragement;  his  comrades  chummed  with  him  and 
exhorted  him  to  courage.  At  first  he  rewrote  items  from 
the  morning  papers  and  the  like;  soon  he  began  to  take 
"stories"  over  the  telephone  and  write  them  for  publi- 
cation ;  he  was  quite  cheered  up  to  see  how  little  doctoring 
his  copy  needed.  Then  he  was  sent  out  after  news,  a 
large  fire  in  Jersey  City,  for  instance,  and  a  run  on  a  trust 


ii6  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

company — these  were  days  of  panic — and  to  get  inter- 
views. Several  mild  compliments  followed  such  experi- 
ments on  the  score  of  his  thoroughness  and  accuracy  in 
getting  facts.  One  day  he  handed  in  a  sketch  to  Cooper 
who  read  it,  chewed  his  moustache  and  remarked: 
' '  Young  man,  you're  like  all  Southerners,  you  slop  over ;  but 
you've  put  a  touch  in  here  that  is  all  your  own."  Mills 
sends  home  the  compliment  with  great  elation,  adding: 
"Not  bad  as  a  starter  and  the  sting  wasn't  in  the  tail." 

Then  came  the  day — it  was  February  i6,  1908 — when 
he  was  sent  down  to  Wall  Street  to  cover  the  Curb  Market. 
This  meant  no  raise  of  pay,  but  the  duty  required  great 
exactitude.  The  assignment  showed  that  he  had  inspired 
confidence  in  the  office.  He  enjoyed  the  experience, 
including  the  first  glance  it  gave  him  at  the  big  men  in 
finance.  He  almost  resented  the  slight  amount  of  real 
work  to  be  done,  but  balanced  up  with  a  resolution  to 
write  fiction  and  sketch  stuff  for  the  famous  "back  page" 
of  the  paper.  Some  six  weeks  later,  he  had  an  experience 
to  which  nearly  all  young  newspapermen  are  exposed  in 
one  shape  or  form.     He  writes ; 

Could  have  added  a  neat  little  wad  to  my  salary  this  month 
had  I  seen  fit.  I  handle  the  curb  stock  reports  and  a  repre- 
sentative of  a  certain  firm  slipped  $25  into  my  hand  the  other 
day.  He  nearly  fainted  when  I  handed  it  back  and  told  him 
that  I  didn't  happen  to  have  any  price.  ...  I  needed  the 
money  all  right,  in  fact  on  the  very  day  it  was  offered  I  had  a 
pecuHarly  subtle  influence  at  work  on  me  that  might  have 
made  the  chance  a  temptation.  Isn't  it  strange  how  things 
always  seem  to  hit  at  the  very  centre  of  a  fellow's  weak  spots? 
Well,  I  may  always  be  short  of  cash  but  I  will  always  be  able 
to  look  myself  in  the  face. 

All  along,  while  doing  his  day's  work  for  The  Evening 
Sun,  a  nominal  eight  hours  but  often  more,  he  kept  on 


Work  and  Play  "7 

working   for   the   Charlotte   Observer.     He   sent    special 
articles,  New  York  news  and  gossip  and  Christmas  matter. 
The  resulting  checks  were  not  large  but  with  their  aid  he 
paid  $125  on  December  17,  1907,  on  account  of  his  note 
at  the  First  National  Bank  of  Statesville,  which   had 
provided  for  his  early  New  York  expenses.     He  renewed 
for  $100.     Besides  this  process  of  "paying  for  the  dead 
horse"  he  made  some  savings  out  of  his  salary.     How 
he  did  it  may  seem  puzzling  in  post-bellum  days  of  high 
hving  cost,  but  he  paid  moderately  for  his  room,  took  his 
meals  at  cheap  places— after  a  while  boarded  at  Miss 
Jarmen's— and  made  the  outfit  that  he  brought  from 
home  last  through  his  period  of  strain.     Withal,  he  lived 
neither  a  narrow  nor  an  uninteresting  life.     Besides  his 
writing  and  much  reading  he  amused  himself  in  many 
ways.     He  had  all  New  York  to  roam  about  and  he  did 
so,  learning  the  city  journalistically.     He  went  to  theatres, 
concerts,  the  opera.     He  attended  several  dinners,  includ- 
ing one,  very  early,  of  the  University  Alumni  at  the  Cafe 
Boulevard  on  Second  Avenue,  at  which  he  made  a  speech 
that  was  applauded.     He  had  many  friends  and  paid  som.e 
social  visits,  but,  it  must  be  admitted,  as  few  as  he  possibly 

could. 

All  these  doings,  mixed  up  with  stray  bits  of  his  work, 
and  all  colored  by  his  hopes  and  his  fears,  his  homesickness 
and  his  will  to  win,  he  flashes  through  those  home  letters. 
There  is  no  trace  of  Hterary  effort,  but  something  far  more 
vivid  in  the  careless,  natural  revelation  of  himself,  the 
unconscious  intimacy  of  detail,  the  frank  assumption  of  an 
interested  and  affectionate  enjoyment  of  his  confidences  on 
the  part  of  those  to  whom  they  were  made.  The  hasty 
but  pointed  periods  are  instinct  with  youth  and  hope  and 
the  joy  of  Hfe.  He  was  forming  his  mind  and  his  taste, 
too,  and  he  plunged  into  criticism  of  all  sorts  with  refresh- 
ing frankness.     He  was  by  no  means  always  right.     Many 


ii8  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

an  opinion  of  those  days  he  would  have  laughed  at  a  few 
years  later,  but  he  was  always  interesting  and  generally 
had  a  reason,  even  though  not  over  sound,  to  give  for  his 
faith. 

A  few  excerpts  from  these  living  documents  will  best 
serve  to  illustrate  what  he  was  and  how  he  spent  his  days. 
While  he  is  still  wondering  as  to  how  he  came  to  land  in  his 
job,  he  writes: 

Have  not  been  out  much  at  night.  Saw  the  Hippodrome 
show  and  Nazimova  in  The  Master  Builder  all  in  the  first  week 
that  I  was  here.  Those  things  don't  attract  me  as  they  used 
to  [alluding  probably  to  his  earlier  New  York  visits]  and  I 
find  that  I  am  very  ready  to  rest  when  I  get  in,  although  I 
don't  seem  to  do  enough  to  tire  an  infant.  Doohan  is  good 
company  and  I  like  him  a  whole  lot.  We  smoke,  play  casino, 
or  go  out  for  a  glass  of  beer  together  every  evening.  Never 
before  have  I  had  impressed  on  me  so  forcibly  that  man  is  a 
sociable  animal.     I  feel  the  need  of  company  in  this  town. 

He  was  not  really  blase  as  to  shows,  as  will  appear.  He 
was,  however,  lonely  in  the  crowd.  He  longed  for  the 
family  circle.  The  sensation  of  doing  too  little  work  soon 
wore  off.  They  kept  him  pretty  busy  at  the  office  and  he 
began  pleading  this  condition  as  an  excuse  for  laxity  in 
writing,  which,  in  fact,  was  never  perceptible.  The 
Alumni  dinner  seems  to  have  been  on  the  evening  of  Octo- 
ber 12.  It  was  a  highly  "expansive"  affair,  with  thirty 
eight  banqueters,  but  Mills  did  not  "go  up  in  the  air" 
even  when  Judge  Van  Wyck,  who  presided,  called  on  "Q.  S. 
Mills  of  the  New  York  Sun,  one  of  the  latest  to  enter  our 
ranks."  "You  can  bet,"  he  writes,  "that  I  was  surprised 
and  nervous,  but  I  got  up  and  decided  that  I  had  to  be 
game  for  the  sake  of  '07.  I  told  them  a  few  things  about 
the  new  university."  On  this  occasion,  he  felt  truly  at 
home.     He  knew  many  of  the  party  and  one  or  two  were 


The  Play's  the  Thing  119 

real  friends.  He  was  complimented  on  his  speech.  * '  May- 
be," he  remarks,  "it  was  the  wine  that  was  talking."  His 
next  dinner,  about  a  month  later,  was  a  Y.  M.  C.  A.  affair 
and  much  "drier"  if  not  less  "expansive."  He  went  as  a 
reporter  but  enjoyed  it  hugely.  He  comically  represented 
that  it  took  several  days  to  recover  an  appetite  after  it,  the 
eating  was  so  prodigious,  in  the  absence  of  drinking.  A 
third  feast  was  that  of  the  Tennessee  Society  at  the 
Waldorf — a  great  event.  ' '  Bob  Taylor  put  up  a  spiel  that 
was  worth  hearing.  We  had  Southern  music  and  South- 
ern grub — in  so  far  as  a  French  chef  could  be  considered 
capable  of  preparing  it.  While  the  drinkables  weren't 
moonshine  cocktails,  they  were  all  right;  no  'water  in 
glasses  tall!'  " 

He  sent  clippings  home  of  his  work,  good  straightaway 
reporting  as  it  appeared  in  the  paper,  and  others  of  many 
things  of  interest  to  the  home  folk.  Musical  and  dramatic 
news  and  criticism  were  most  in  favor,  and  presently  his 
own  views  in  these  lines  begin  to  occupy  a  large  space  in 
the  letters,  especially  those  addressed  to  his  mother.  The 
amount  he  wrote  and  clipped  on  these  topics  seems  at 
first  sight  out  of  proportion,  but  Mrs.  Mills  explains: 
"The  reason  Quincy  wrote  so  much  about  plays  and 
operas  was  that  we  had  gained  at  home  from  books  and 
magazines  a  satisfying  knowledge  of  pictures  and  sculp- 
ture. But  plays  and  operas  must  be  seen  and  heard  to 
be  understood  and  appreciated.  For  this  reason,  when 
we  isolated  Southerners  come  to  New  York,  we  have  to 
satisfy  a  lifetime  hunger  for  these  forms  of  mind  food.  It 
is  impossible  for  one  who  has  always  lived  here  to  realize 
the  keen  freshness  of  our  interest." 

The  Observer  Christmas  stories,  of  which  he  wrote  two 
long  ones,  kept  him  severely  tied  down  until  the  middle  of 
November.  Then  he  began  a  course  of  theatre  going.  He 
saw  The  Merry  Widow — "par,  perhaps,"  he  comments — 


120  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

Erminie, — "pretty  good."  Oddly,  he  found  little  catchy 
music  in  them;  only  the  too,  too  well-known  waltz  in  the 
former  aroused  his  enthusiasm.  He  went  back  to  hear  it 
several  times,  and,  again  and  again,  names  it  but  to  praise. 
One  letter  in  January,  1908,  he  devotes  mainly  to  his 
theatregoing.  On  the  whole,  he  says,  it  "has  not  given 
me  as  much  pleasure  as  I  had  anticipated."  He  thinks 
there  were  no  musical  shows  equal  to  Fantana,  that  now 
forgotten  favorite  of  a  season,  and  music  was  the  thing 
he  most  loved.  However,  he  found  Anna  Held  in  The 
Parisian  Model,  was  "very  good  in  a  sensuous  sort  of 
way."  He  had  a  windfall  in  the  Abom  Opera  Company 
at  the  Lincoln  Square  Theatre — Fra  Diavolo  and  The 
Chimes  of  Normandy  in  English  at  popular  prices.  Estelle 
Wentworth,  "who  has  a  remarkably  clear  voice,"  caught 
his  fancy. 

But  "the  climax  of  the  musical  hash"  came  when  he 
got  "office  tickets"  for  a  Saturday  night  performance  at 
the  Metropolitan  Opera  House.  The  opera  was  Aida. 
The  naive  boyishness  of  his  account  of  it  is  worth  quoting 
pretty  fully : 

To  say  that  I  enjoyed  myself  would  be  putting  it  very 
mildly,  and  it  wasn't  a  case  of  grand  opera  rave  either.  I 
went  expecting  to  be  bored  and  well  bored,  but  had  a  pleasant 
surprise.  The  opera  is  so  totally  different  from  what  I  expected 
that  it  took  me  right  away.  Gadski  had  the  leading  r61e,  and 
while  hers  was  the  only  voice  that  pleased  me  especially — 
the  only  one  good  enough  to  make  up  by  fullness  of  tone 
and  expression  for  the  "Greek"  of  the  words — the  whole 
thing  was  so  splendidly  staged  that  I  was  amazed.  The  ballets 
were  really  worth  while,  and  the  instrumental  music  through- 
out could  not  be  improved  upon;  it  is  simply  perfect.  These 
things  alone  pleased  me,  for  the  opera  as  a  piece  of  literature 
is  decidedly  ordinary.  It  seemed  to  me  a  perfect  anti-climax. 
This  effect  may  have  been  produced  by  the  less  satisfying 


A  Touch  of  Realism  121 

quality  of  the  music  in  the  last  act.  ...  In  minor  details, 
some  things  enlightened  me.  I  did  not  know  that  the 
Egyptian  priestesses  wore  knee  skirts  and  silk  tights  and 
adorned  their  blo7ide  curls  with  picture  hats  with  ostrich  plumes. 
But  they  were  good  to  look  at  so  I  pardoned  Conried. 

He  kept  on  going  to  the  opera.  On  January  28,  he 
saw  Faust  and  enjoyed  it  "immensely,"  Dippel  had  the 
title  part.  Mills  says  nothing  of  him  but  rates  Chaliapine 
as  the  star  of  the  evening,  "the  critics  to  the  contrary, 
notwithstanding."  He  goes  on:  "In  comparison  with 
Aida,  Faust  is  more  satisfying  to  me  as  a  dramatic  work, 
but  its  music  is  hardly  so  impressive,  and  its  staging  far 
less  elaborate  and  striking.  I  cannot  conceive  a  piece  of 
staging  more  splendid  than  that  of  the  triumphal  scene  in 
Aida."     Of  Carmen,  he  writes  a  little  later : 

It  is  the  best  that  I  have  seen  in  the  grand  opera  line,  so  far. 
The  cast  included  some  unusually  good  singers  for  a  popular 
price  performance.  [It  was  at  Hammerstein's.j  Calve  her- 
self would  have  to  do  some  hard  work  to  surpass  Bressler- 
Gianoli.  She  was  perfect  as  the  cigarette  girl.  Mme. 
Zeppili,  the  little  woman  right  under  her  on  the  bill  of  fare,  had 
about  the  sweetest,  clearest  soprano  that  it  has  ever  been  my 
lot  to  hear.  Dalmores  was  good;  so  was  Gilibert,  so  was 
Trentini — and,  best  of  all,  they  suited  their  parts  and  could 
act.  Grand  opera  to  reach  its  perfection  must  be  acted  as 
well  as  sung.  When  they  put  a  big  beef  of  a  woman  into 
Camille's  part  in  La  Traviata  as  they  did  at  the  Metropolitan 
on  Saturday  night,  it  took  all  the  heart  out  of  the  play  for  me. 
I  have  read  Camille  and  have  very  decided  ideas  as  to  the  per- 
sonality of  the  slender  little  slip  of  the  Parisian  understratum 
— who  was  never  so  bad  in  my  eyes  anyway — and  when  they 
put  in  her  shoes  a  big  woman  that  could  chew  up  a  beefsteak, 
offhand,  and  made  her  attempt  to  pass  off  from  comsumption, 

the  result  was  simply   heartrending.      True [Needless 

to   specify    the    great    artiste    he    was    lampooning]  has  a 


122  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

voice  remarkable  for  its  range  and  power,   but  what's  the 
use? 

At  last  he  heard  Caruso  and  he  gives  a  good  bit  of  space 
to  him  in  a  letter  written,  March  2,  although  he  begins: 
"From  my  standpoint,  there  isn't  much  to  tell."  It  was 
again  his  theatrical  taste  that  was  offended.  His  ear  and 
his  eye  were  at  odds.  The  great  tenor's  anatomy  did  not 
suit  Mills.  The  opera  was  II  Trovatore  and  he  was  dis- 
appointed in  it  too,  in  spite  of  Owen  Meredith's  super- 
lative. "It  can't  approach  Carmen,''  he  writes,  adding 
naively  that  "the  duet,  the  Miserere  and  the  Anvil  Chorus 
were  by  far  the  best  parts ;  but  they  were  not  up  to  what 
I  had  hoped.  Mme.  Eames  sang  with  Caruso  and  to  my 
mind  beat  him." 

His  devotion  to  music  was  not  confined  to  the  Opera. 
He  went  to  the  Hippodrome  frequently  on  Sunday  nights, 
he  sampled  the  Philharmonic  and  other  orchestras  and  he 
heard  The  Creation  sung  at  Carnegie  Hall  and  enjoyed  it. 
But  his  taste  was  still  in  the  formative  stage.  He  goes 
back  to  Carmen  to  express  surprise  that  his  mother  did  not 
care  for  it.  It  was  the  Toreador's  song  that  hit  him  hard ; 
he  pronounces  it ' '  the  catchiest  air  I  have  struck  up  with  in 
some  moons."  He  "carried  it  away"  with  him  on  one 
hearing — he  had  probably  heard  it  often,  as  a  popular 
selection — and  he  thought  that  wonderful,  as  his  ear  was 
not  quick.  Incidentally,  in  another  letter  he  defines  his 
musical  state  exactly.  He  had  gone  to  see  an  armory 
review  of  the  Twenty-second  Regiment,  New  York  State 
National  Guard,  which  he  describes  as  "the  most  effective 
military  event  I  have  had  the  pleasure  of  witnessing." 
He  goes  on:  "The  music  added  not  a  little  to  the  spec- 
tacle, for  it  was  good  music  of  the  sort  I  really  believe  I 
appreciate  best — along  with  the  remainder  of  the  canaille 
— military  music." 


Stage  Morality  123 

"Being  in  thirst  for  something  light  after  such  heavy 
feed  [as  Tr  ova  tore] — an  elegant  term  to  apply  to  Grand 
Opera — and  out  to  hunt  for  relaxation,"  he  went  to  hear 
the  Waltz  Dream,  and  this  brings  out  another  aspect  of  his 
character.     He  writes  of  it : 

It's  a  dream  all  right,  a  nightmare,  in  fact.  If  anybody  had 
told  me  that  respectable  folk,  even  in  New  York,  would  sup- 
port so  uselessly  vulgar  a  production  I  would  not  have  be- 
lieved it.  People  that  will  stand  for  this  sort  of  thing  and  then 
bray  at  Shaw  are  beyond  my  ken.  .  .  .  The  first  act  in  the 
breadth  of  the  suggestion  of  its  lines  would  justify  a  Zulu  chief 
in  running  it  out  of  an  African  jungle.  But  Broadway  whoops 
and  cheers  at  it,  and  the  women  seem  to  get  the  most  fun  of 
all  out  of  the  ill-smelling  attempts  at  humor  that  endeavor  to 
say  everything  that  can  be  said,  with  the  least  possible  veil  of 
propriety. 

God  help  the  stage  if  this  is  the  sort  of  thing  the  public  is 
going  to  yell  for  and  playwrights  are  going  to  turn  out  in  the 
future,  while  Shaw  and  Ibsen  are  set  back  as  immoral.  In- 
cidentally it  is  hardly  worth  while  for  actors  and  actresses  to 
kick  at  the  disfavor  in  which  their  profession  is  held  when 
they  consent  to  produce  such  stuff. 

The  young  man  who  wrote  this — he  was  about  twenty- 
five — was  neither  a  prig  nor  a  prude.  Simply,  he  had  a 
standard  of  public  taste  and  morals.  His  sympathy  for 
the  Traviata  has  appeared.  A  couple  of  weeks  before  his 
Waltz  Dream  anger,  he  had  something  to  say  about  the 
Thaw  case  in  answer  to  some  remark  of  his  mother's.  He 
finds  a  degree  of  condonement  for  Stanford  White's  share 
in  the  plot  in  that  "he  did  something  positive  for  American 
art  to  counterbalance  his  negative  influence  morally." 
"The  woman  in  the  case,"  he  adds,  "has  attracted  me 
pretty  much  as  she  has  everyone.  I  don't  blame  her  so 
hardly  for  going  back  that  second  time  to  White" — with 
much  more  that  is  kindly  and  in  the  spirit  of  the  most 


124  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

famous  judgment  of  such  cases  by  the  greatest  Judge 
of  all. 

Young  Quincy  could  be  gay  enough  on  occasion  even 
to  the  borderline  of  the  risque.  He  has  in  one  place  a 
description  of  the  New  York  spring  breezes  in  which  he 
grows  almost  as  sportive  as  they  are  wont  to  be : 

There  is  a  blast  from  the  north  howling  about  the  eaves.  It 
has  been  cutting  capers  in  the  streets  and  around  the  corners. 
I'll  venture  to  bet  that  every  maiden  in  New  York  put  on  her 
clockworks  when  she  arrayed  herself  in  her  Sunday  finery  this 
morning — just  so  as  to  be  on  the  safe  side  if  anything  hap- 
pened. Not  that  anything  was  going  to  happen,  but,  then, 
one  never  can  tell ;  gusts  are  so  very  tricky  and  so  very  much 
given  to  surprising  one — and  others — at  the  most  unexpected 
moments,  that  it  is,  after  all,  best  to  be  on  the  safe  side.  Then 
when  one  has  taken  all  the  precautions,  and  done  all  one  can 
to — well,  to  mitigate  the  calamity,  and,  after  all,  nothing,  not 
even  so  much  as  a  discreet  flurry  does  dash  at  one,  can  one 
really  be  blamed  for  feeling  just  a  wee  bit  miffed  at  old  Boreas? 
It  could  not  have  been  one's  fault,  had  it  happened  for  how 
could  one  have  prevented  it  and  others  would  not  have  cared. 

Boyish  fun  and  animal  spirits,  quite  innocent  but  not 
exactly  puritanical!  But  the  mind  of  twenty -five  often 
turned  toward  the  complementary  human  element. 
Besides  sundry  family  friends,  other  feminine  wraiths  flit 
through  the  letters.  He  saw  a  Sun  typewriter  girl  put  her 
arm  around  the  neck  of  an  extra  sized  Maltese  in  the 
counting  room  and  concluded  that  it  must  be  the  far- 
famed  "Office  Cat."  The  girl  was  pretty;  she  hugged 
the  sleek  animal.  "Have  been  endeavoring  to  meet  said 
typewriter  girl  ever  since,  for  I  like  cats,  and,  with  so 
much  in  common,  she  might — well,  it's  an  awfully  fine 
Sunday  and  I'm  going  for  a  walk."  Very  early  in  his 
career,  after  reporting  a  charity  conference  he  writes: 


Satisfying  "Candida'*  125 

"Had  company,  lots  of  it,  in  the  shape  of  about  twenty- 
one  years  of  girl,  good  looking  girl,  who  is  reporter  for 

the .     We  took  lots  of  notes  and  when  I  got  back  to 

the  shop  I  found  lots  of  marks  of  the  meaning  of  which 
I  hadn't  even  the  suggestion  of  an  idea."  The  same — or 
was  it  another? — very  good  looking  girl  reporter  figured 
largely  in  his  life  for  several  years.  His  comrades  thought 
it  looked  serious.  It  might  have  been,  but  Fate  willed  it 
otherwise.  In  fact  it  may  be  said  of  Mills  at  this  period 
(as  of  most  young  fellows  of  his  age)  that  he  sometimes 
neglected  "  to  be  off  with  the  old  love  before  he  was  on  with 
the  new." 

Besides  going  to  the  opera  and  otherwise  cultivating 
music,  Mills  became  a  great  playgoer.  He  shared  the 
pleasure  and  instruction  he  derived  with  the  people  at 
home,  chiefly  in  letters  to  his  mother.  The  first  play  he 
mentions  is  Candida,  "the  most  satisfying  thing  in  the 
dramatic  line  that  I  have  taken  a  look  at  so  far. ' '  There 
is,  however,  no  clue  as  to  what  else  he  had  then  seen  except 
musical  comedies.  "I  nearly  hurt  myself  laughing  at 
Prossy,"  he  goes  on,  "and  the  old  gentleman  whose  name, 
according  to  my  normal  forgetfulness,  I  cannot  lay  hold 
of" — no  doubt  Burgess.  "I  listened  with  sincere  in- 
terest to  every  line  of  the  play;  it  is  the  best  of  Shaw's 
that  I  have  seen  and,  after  seeing  it,  I,  at  least,  am  sure 
that  he  knew  what  he  was  talking  about  when  he  said  that 
he  could  write  better  plays  than  Shakespeare.  He  can  in 
one  sense,  because  he  is  a  twentieth-century  dramatist, 
dealing  with  twentieth-century  life.  But  in  some  ways 
Bill  has  him  beat  several  laps  still."  Mills  himself,  it  may 
be  observed,  was  very  twentieth-century. 

He  next  praises  The  Witching  Hour  and  its  star,  John 
Mason.  The  theme  of  the  play,  telepathy,  gripped  his 
attention.  "Augustus  Thomas,"  he  comments,  "got  a 
good  steed  but  rode  it  till  it  was  windbroke  and  weak  at 


126  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

the  knees."  He  thought  the  occult  element  was  so  over- 
done as  to  provoke  a  smile.  He  decided  that  with  experi- 
ence and  the  material  he  could  have  turned  out  a  better 
play.  Yet,  he  concludes,  it  was  * '  one  of  the  most  effective 
I  have  seen  and  I  wouldn't  take  a  lot  for  the  pleasure  I  got 
out  of  it."  Then  he  does  some  classification:  "Of  the 
other  dramas  I  have  seen  The  Man  of  the  Hour,  Anna 
Karenina,  The  Master  Builder,  A  Doll's  House,  Lear  and 
Macbeth  have  been  first  class;  The  Lion  and  the  Mouse, 
and  The  Rose  of  the  Rancho  passable,  while  The  Thief 
proved  no  special  excuse  for  its  existence,  so  far  as  I  could 
see." 

The  Reckoning  with  its  curtain  raiser,  The  Literary  Sense, 
he  found  "more  Ibsenish  than  Ibsen."  He  thought  Miss 
Katherine  Gray,  who  was  featured  in  them,  "at  the  top  of 
the  list  of  emotional  actresses,  but  Mme.  Nazimova's  name 
must  be  written  on  the  line  just  above  hers.  Her  emotion 
is  a  little  too  much  of  the  physical ;  Nazimova  catches  you 
with  the  mental  side  of  her  work  and  knows  just  how 
much  reserve  her  lines  will  stand." 

Then  he  saw  Mr.  Sothern  in  Hamlet  and  a  great  and 
growing  admiration  set  in.  He  says  the  interpretation  of 
the  character  was  "identical  with  the  way  I  had  learned 
to  read  the  play,  but  he  added  some  things  I  hadn't  been 
deep  enough  to  pick  out  of  it."  He  liked  Lord  Dundreary 
much  less,  but  he  is  almost  rhapsodical  over  //  /  Were 
King — "about  the  most  perfect  drama  I  have  ever  seen. 
After  seeing  Sothern  as  Villon,  I  am  satisfied  he  is  a  great 
actor.  He  plays  the  part  as  if  he  gloried  in  it.  His 
supporters  fit  their  places  as  if  made  for  them.  I  am 
going  to  see  it  again.  The  lyrics  in  the  book  are  exquisite, 
and  Sothern  renders  them  just  right." 

He  also  went  to  see  Mr.  Henry  Ludlowe  as  Shylock  but 
the  portrayal  did  not  satisfy  him,  though  he  confessed 
himself  unable  to  assign  a  reason.     One  more  stage  experi- 


Art  and  Books  127 

ence :  "I  went  to  see  Olga  Nethersole  do  Sapho ;  I  wanted 
to  see  how  the  book  staged.  It's  not  so  bad  and  could 
be  made  really  very  good  if  properly  dramatized.  But 
Olga  is  impossible.  Sapho  is  a  distinctly  disreputable 
person,  but  she  is  to  be  preferred  to  affectation.  I  was 
satisfied,  however,  for  I  got  some  pointers,"  Those 
interested  in  psychological  oddities  may  be  interested  in 
comparing  this  with  some  other  criticisms  quoted. 

Music  and  the  theatre  were  not  Mills's  only  interests 
of  the  intellectual  kind.  There  are  several  mentions  of 
visits  to  the  Metropolitan  Museum  of  Art,  including  one 
to  the  exposition  of  the  works  of  St.  Gaudens;  but  there  is 
neither  description  nor  comment.  His  mother's  expla- 
nation as  to  dramatics,  no  doubt,  applies.  Of  books  and 
concern  in  books  there  are  innumerable  passages,  some  of 
them  extended.  Sometimes  discussion  arose  through  his 
mother  and  himself  reading  a  book  simultaneously  and 
exchanging  views,  as  in  the  case  of  The  Shuttle,  Mrs. 
Frances  Hodgson  Burnett's  novel  of  international  marri- 
ages and  the  interweaving  of  American  and  European 
stock,  which  had  just  then  been  published.  * '  I  agree  with 
you,"  he  writes,  "that  the  first  part  of  the  book  is  superior 
— in  some  ways.  It  is  the  analysis  of  character  in  this 
section  that  makes  it  so  worth  while.  The  delineation  is 
imusually  good,  but  a  trifle  drawn  out  at  times.  The 
latter  third  is  much  more  dramatic  in  incident — don't 
you  think  so? — and  is  considerably  more  rapid  in  move- 
ment. ...  In  places  it  is  very  strong  and  impresses  you 
with  its  reality.  The  book  should  stage  well  although  it 
might  have  to  be  altered  materially. ' '  He  stayed  at  home 
every  evening  for  a  week  to  read  it.  He  finally  pronounces 
it ' '  a  wonderfully  pleasing  and  satisfying  book  for  a  modem 
novel."  Undoubtedly  its  political  or  sociological  aspects 
appealed  to  him  very  keenly.  But  Mrs.  Mills  is  author- 
ity, as  has  appeared,  for  the  belief  that  Mrs.  Burnett  was 


128  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

one  of  two  or  three  contemporary  novelists  in  whose  work 
he  took  an  unflagging  interest.  He  read  very  many  of  her 
works. 

Another  admirable  novel  which  appeared  about  the 
same  time  aroused  both  his  interest  and  his  analytical 
powers.  This  was  DeMorgan's  Alice  for  Short.  He  is 
both  appreciative  and  somewhat  unfair  in  his  criticism  of 
it.  He  was  on  the  waiting  list  for  five  weeks  at  a  library — 
which  he  calls  "the  little  library  on  Thirteenth  Street" — 
before  he  got  it,  so,  one  evening,  he  could  not  "resist  the 
temptation  to  see  what  it  was  like  even  if  the  library  card 
did  come  just  on  the  heels  of  a  resolve  to  get  very  busy," 
writing  special  newspaper  stuff.  Then,  "after  one  found 
what  it  was  like,  how  could  one  stop  reading  until  one  had 
finished  the  very  last  page,  even  if  it  took  one  until  1 130  on 
Sunday  morning  ? "  He  spent  all  his  spare  time  for  a  week 
on  it.     He  writes: 

After  reading  it,  I  feel  as  if  I  had  been  delving  for  days  in  some 
old  garret,  among  haircloth  trunks  and  musty  lace  and  faded 
silks  of  long  ago.  It  is  a  rare  sensation  and  is  distinctly  worth 
while.  If  I  could  only  enjoy  it  every  week  I  believe  I  would 
be  willing  to  forego  my  desire  to  grind  out  copy  of  my  own  just 
to  give  way  to  the  enjoyment. 

Not  that  I  have  no  flaw  to  find  in  this  fine  tale  of  orphan  and 
artist — and  cats.  Of  course  there  is  no  trouble  in  understand- 
ing why  the  book  appealed  so  directly  to  your  heart ;  anything 
so  permeated  with  an  atmosphere  of  cats  was  bound  to  capture 
you  [himself  equally,  of  which  more  presently] ;  but  frankly, 
I  cannot  help  nourishing  a  grudge  against  my  friend  De Mor- 
gan because  it  is  an  absolute  impossibility  for  me  ever  to  find 
the  young  lady  with  the  tantalizing  scar  "just  around  where 
folk  kiss  you."  I  fear  it  will  be  some  time  before  I  cease  ex- 
amining every  girl  whom  I  meet  to  see  whether  or  not  there  is 
a  scar  just  around  where  she  should  be  kissed.  ...  Of 
course,  Alice  is  his  best  creation  and  I'll  wager  that,  if  he  has  a 
wife  who  has  not  a  scar  on  her  cheek,  she  is  keeping  a  sharp 


"Alice  for  Short"  129 

lookout  for  some  woman  who  has.  This  is  only  another  way 
of  saying  that  DeMorgan  was  sorry  he  couldn't  marry  her 
himself  before  he  got  through  with  his  book. 

Charles  is  the  second  best  and  Peggy  third  in  the  scale  of  por- 
traiture, but  there  are  any  number  of  smaller  parts  mighty  clear 
cut.  In  fact,  viewing  this  man's  characters  collectively,  it  is 
easy  to  see  that  he  went  on  the  trail  of  Thackeray,  as  he  in- 
dicates liimself  by  his  comparison  of  Lavinia  to  Becky  Sharpe, 
when  he  dipped  his  pen  into  the  inkpot.  [A  curious  theory 
this,  in  view  of  the  general  and  much  shallower  comparison 
of  DeMorgan  with  Dickens.]  For  my  part  I  think  he  goes 
Thackeray  one  better  in  the  way  that  he  keeps  the  little  in- 
timate things  of  everyday  life  always  next  your  heart ;  but  his 
characters  in  the  large  have  not  the  strength  of  his  master's. 
I  would  rather  read  Alice  for  Short  than  The  Newcomes. 
Thackeray's  observance  of  details  is  too  dry;  the  younger 
writer's  is  more  folksy  and  absorbing.  Did  it  occur  to  you 
that  in  the  book  as  a  whole  there  was  an  unusual  dearth  of 
detailed  place  description? 

To  get  on  to  Alice  and  Charles — she  is  not  to  be  forgotten, 
but  one  could  remember  her  with  more  pleasure  if  she  had  been 
less  sufficient  at  all  points.  She  would  have  been  enough  as  a 
very  sensible  and  lovable  young  woman.  She  had  her  hands 
full  accomplishing  that  without  becoming  an  authoress,  con- 
sidering her  parentage.  That  is  where  DeMorgan  fell  down. 
He  should  have  left  out  the  literary  achievement — and  the 
cigarettes.  The  fact  is  he  felt  so  enthused  over  her  that  he 
came  to  believe  her  capable  of  anything.  But  why  spoil  the 
scar  with  the  cigarette?  He  could  have  made  Alice  uncon- 
ventional without  it.  I  do  not  like  women  who  smoke  ciga- 
rettes. And,  finally,  why  had  Alice  to  be  illegitimate  ?  There, 
she  was  punished  with  something  she  did  not  deserve. 

Passing  on  to  Charles,  I  must  say  I  never  went  into  raptures 
over  him  at  any  stage.  His  saving  grace  was  that  he  liked 
cats.  True,  the  author  does  not  explicitly  state  that  he  liked 
them,  but  he  must  have.  One  of  my  reasons  for  disliking  his 
make-up  is  that  in  his  idle  brush  and  maul  stick  I  see  con- 
siderable similarity  to  my  pen.  And  in  the  end  he  got  more 
0 


130  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

than  was  coming  to  him;  a  girl  Hke  Alice  deserved  a  more 
positive  character.  I  have  a  slight  notion  that  your  advice  to 
me  with  regard  to  reading  this  book  may  have  been  prompted 
by  a  resemblance — in  some  ways,  at  least^that  you  perceived 
between  the  painter  and  myself.  Come  now,  Mother,  haven't 
I  caught  you !  .  .  .  But  I  like,  especially,  DeMorgan's  use 
of  "preparation,"  with  which,  as  a  requisite  of  composition, 
you  are  somewhat  acquainted. 

Mills  also  gives  some  attention  to  G.  B.  S.'s  early  skit, 
Cashel  Byron's  Profession,  which  he  read  on  a  Sixth  Ave- 
nue car  and  ' '  ensconced  on  a  quiet  bench ' '  in  Central  Park. 
On  it  he  makes  one  acute  criticism:  "Chiefly,  he  falls 
down  in  that  he  fails  to  establish  a  single  character 
that  is  a  character  from  back  to  back."  This  is  a  dis- 
covery of  the  fatal  weakness  of  all  Shaw's  ventures  in 
fiction. 

Books  and  their  contents  played  a  large  part  in  his  life. 
One  night,  "one  of  the  boys"  from  the  office  called  in  to 
see  him.  He  had  to  be  entertained.  "I  started  in  on 
him  with  poetry,"  says  Mills,  "and  read  him  everything, 
from  Browning  to  selections  from  Life.  He  became 
properly  nauseated  and  hasn't  recovered  yet.  But  I 
forgot  to  mention  that  he  tried  to  smoke  a  cigar  a  little 
stronger  than  he  was." 

All  this  time  Mills  was  longing  for  his  own  books  which 
were  down  in  Statesville.  He  was  lonely  without  them  and 
broaches  the  subject  of  having  them  sent  to  him,  again 
and  again.  In  general,  uncertainty  as  to  whether  he 
would  change  rooms  or  not  held  him  back ;  then,  he  did  not 
want  his  mother  to  have  the  trouble  of  packing  them  and 
his  father  was  too  ill ;  he  was  always  thinking  of  someone 
else's  interests.  At  last,  he  compromised  on  a  bundle, 
and  these  are  the  books  he  asked  to  have  put  into  it: 
Browning,  Wundt's  Principles  of  Morality  and  his  set  of 
Shakespeare.    He  explains,  "I  am  sure  they  will  enable 


Stimulus  of  Spring  131 

me  to  spend  some  hours  with  satisfaction  to  myself  and  my 
pocketbook." 

But,  as  the  springtime  came  on,  there  was  an  appeal  to 
him  in  the  open  air  that  perhaps  only  those  who  grew  up  in 
the  country  can  realize  and  beside  which  all  indoor 
attractions  paled.     On  March  15,  a  Sunday,  he  writes: 

The  past  few  days  have  been  too  good  to  be  true.  I  am  now 
seated  in  my  palatial  apartment  with  my  one  window  wide 
open  and  no  fire,  and  the  temperature  is  precisely  right.  How 
I  would  like  to  have  a  chance  at  a  few  days  of  the  springtime 
down  home  now !  I  didn't  know  before  that  I  could  really  miss 
birds  and  flowers  to  such  a  degree.  It  doesn't  seem  right  not 
to  be  able  to  get  a  smell  of  the  woods.  I  have  been  consoling 
myself  these  bright  days  by  strolling  down  to  the  seawall  dur- 
ing my  odd  minutes  and  watching  the  ships  lying  along  the 
docks.  In  the  bustle  and  noise  and  the  strange  odors  mixed 
with  the  taste  of  the  salt  in  the  air  and  the  curious  people  one 
sees  there,  there  is  much  to  take  one  out  of  oneself  as  the 
awakening  of  the  year  does  at  home,  although  not  in  so  deli- 
cate a  way.  There  is  an  element  of  undisguisable  curiosity  in 
the  feeling  here,  and  curiosity  is  always  vulgar. 

A  few  lines  further  on,  he  says :  ' '  The  past  week  was  a 
record  breaker  with  me.  I  did  not  go  out  to  a  single  show. 
Somehow  I  couldn't  get  interested  in  running  around;  it 
seemed  to  be  too  nice  to  be  able  to  stay  at  home  when  I 
had  the  chance." 

In  spite  of  a  good  deal  of  show  going,  his  home,  soHtary 
though  it  was,  remained  a  primary  interest.  Indeed  his 
life  was  made  up  principally  of  his  work  and  his  home,  and 
the  former  was  to  a  large  extent  the  reason  for  the  shows. 
His  "job"  on  The  Evening  Sun  became  more  and  more 
exacting  and  he  constantly  wrote  outside  matter.  Re- 
laxation was  imperative.  His  day  began  at  5  A.M.  for  many 
weeks;  at  six  he  was  at  the  office;  he  was  on  duty  always 
for  eight  "rarely  for  ten"  hours;  usually  he  got  lunch, 


132  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

sometimes  not.  When  he  reached  home,  he  was  ready  for 
a  nap  and  often  slept  for  two  to  four  hours  before 
dinner.  "When  I  have  been  in  the  office  most  of  the 
day,"  he  says,  "it  pays  me  to  get  out  and  walk  after 
dinner.  Otherwise  I  am  apt  to  lie  awake  when  I  turn  in 
for  my  second  bout  of  sleep  after  midnight. ' '  Sometimes, 
instead,  he  went  home  "for  a  good  quiet  smoke  and  a 
bit  of  reading.  But  I  like  to  go  to  shows  pretty  often  and 
have  seen  nearly  two  a  week  for  my  time  here.  It  is  about 
my  only  form  of  dissipation  and  I  think  it  will  repay  me 
from  a  financial  standpoint  later.  As  Sunday  is  the  only 
morning  I  can  sleep,  I  bury  my  alarm  clock  in  my  trunk 
Saturday  night  and  it  is  usually  more  -the  afternoon  than 
the  morning  that  I  open  my  eyes  on,  catching  up  on  all 
the  sleep  I  have  lost  the  week  before." 

Later  still  he  took  up  bowling;  he  had  acquired  some 
skill  in  the  game  at  Statesville.  Now  he  found  it  neces- 
sary to  preserve  the  balance  between  physical  and  mental 
exercise.  "Have  been  dreadfully  sore,"  he  writes  after 
beginning  practice,  "but  am  satisfied  that  it  is  needed. 
May  not  become  a  Samson,  but  I  will  get  a  good  deal 
harder  in  muscle,  something  I  need."  In  1909,  when  he 
had  more  funds,  he  joined  the  gymnasium  classes  of  the 
Washington  Heights  Y.  M.  C.  A.  He  found  such  exercise 
absolutely  necessary  in  order  to  keep  fit.  He  kept  it  up 
until  he  entered  the  training  camp  at  Plattsburg  in  191 7. 
There  it  proved  its  value  when  he  took  up  the  hard  work 
of  marching  and  drilling  and  bayonet  practice.  Though 
slight  in  frame,  he  was  wiry  and  supple  and  always  kept 
himself  physically  at  top  notch. 

Of  his  quarters  on  Washington  Place,  he  speaks  with 
enjoyment.  The  fare  agreed  with  him  and  the  people 
were  amusing,  including  some  Greeks  who  "raved  in  pages 
from  Sophocles,"  a  sculptor  who  played  the  flute  and  a 
blonde  widow  with  a  couple  of  frigid  daughters.     "I  like 


Friend  Thomas  133 

some  of  the  crowd,"  he  tells  his  mother,  but,  undoubtedly, 
his  great  attraction  was  Thomas  the  cat,  who  seems  at 
first  to  have  been  a  furtive  denizen  of  the  kitchen  shadows, 
but  through  his  influence  became  a  prime  favorite  of  the 
upstairs  regions  before  he  departed.  They  had  their 
differences  like  all  true  friends,  but  Thomas  came  to  fill 
an  intimate  and  empty  spot  in  Mills's  heart.  There  had 
always  been  pets  at  Statesville.  The  cat  purring  on  his 
childish  knees,  while  his  mother  read  aloud,  will  be  remem- 
bered.    Enter  the  boarding  house  favorite : 

Tom  is  seated  blissfully  on  my  sofa  pillow  in  comfortable 
proximity  to  the  gas  stove,  and  is  enjoying  an  extra  degree  of 
contentment  after  a  feast  of  chicken  bones  over  in  the  corner. 
We  have  got  thicker  and  thicker,  have  Tom  and  I,  with  much 
addition  to  our  common  happiness.  If  he  does  not  accompany 
me  upstairs  when  I  come  in,  he  usually  wanders  up  and  applies 
his  voice  to  the  chinks  of  my  door  some  time  before  morning, 
if  he  is  in  the  house.  He  has  reached  the  point  of  taking  abso- 
lute possession  when  he  comes  in,  and  sulks  if  I  don't  give  him 
everything  he  demands.  His  usual  roost  for  the  night  is  under 
the  comfort  on  my  bed,  where  he  serves  in  the  capacity  of  a 
foot  warmer  and  music  box  as  well.  It  makes  him  very 
irate  if  I  do  any  kicking  around  after  I  get  under  cover.  If 
I  do  disturb  his  position,  he  growls  and  tackles  the  offending 
limb  through  the  covers  most  ferociously.  As  he  makes  a 
comfortable  plaster  for  a  cold  back,  I  generally  keep  still.  I 
don't  know  what  I'd  do  without  him  now.  He  is  such  good 
company. 

Then  he  tells  of  Thomas's  kittenish  rejuvenation  over  a 
catnip  ball  and  he  sends  one  home  for  the  family  cats. 
Presently,  by  way  of  joke,  he  tipped  Thomas  into  the 
washstand  and  shut  him  in.  A  dazed  cat  emerged  and 
began  hunting  for  the  enemy  who  had  so  betrayed  him, 
never  suspecting  the  half-repentant  Mills.  A  long  and 
detailed  account  of  an  act  of  performing  cats  at  the 


134  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

Hippodrome  follows.  He  bombarded  his  mother  with  cat 
postal  cards — photographs  of  fancy  cats,  cat  valentines 
and  cat  comedy  sketches — his  love  of  cats  and  other 
animals  was  overflowing.  He  got  soaked  "to  the  bone" 
reporting  a  workhorse  parade  in  a  torrential  rain,  but  he 
didn't  mind  a  bit;  "it  was  worth  it  to  see  the  horses. 
You  [his  mother]  would  have  liked  to  be  there." 

At  last,  indeed,  he  was  forced  to  quarrel  with  Thomas 
for  room  in  the  bed  for  his  toes,  which  the  amiable  brute 
tried  to  mangle  with  teeth  and  claws.  However,  after 
some  discipline  in  outer  darkness  on  the  chiny  stairs  there 
was  a  reconciliation.  "We  have  become  an  established 
institution  in  this  house,"  he  sums  up;  "and  he  is  referred 
to  as  my  'gentleman  friend.'  Really  he  has  come  to  take 
up  a  large  per  cent,  of  the  conversation  at  meal  times  and  is 
considered  as  equal  to  any  of  the  rest  of  the  white  folk." 
At  one  time,  he  says,  he  has  discussed  with  Thomas  the 
proposition  of  moving  to  Harlem  and  taking  him  along 
whenever  he  went  there  and  Thomas  cordially  consented. 
But,  when  the  time  came,  he  changed  his  mind.  Thomas 
was  established  in  comfort  at  Miss  Jarmen's  and  he  would 
not  risk  bringing  him  among  strangers,  where  he  might  not 
be  appreciated  or  welcomed.  They  all  wanted  to  keep 
him  in  the  old  place,  "so  you  see  my  time  has  not  been 
entirely  wasted  here  in  Manhattan,  for  I  have  made  Tom  a 
fixture  at  115." 

The  holidays  did  not  affect  the  tenor  of  Mills's  way  to 
any  great  extent.  He  chose  them  as  days  to  write  home 
and  his  mind  dwelt  much  on  the  old  times  in  Statesville. 
He  had  to  work  on  Thanksgiving  day  so  he  was  not  lonely. 
He  and  Doohan  feasted  at  a  restaurant  and  he  found  much 
to  be  thankful  for,  including  the  fact  that  his  father  and 
mother  "were  having  a  pleasant  day  out  in  N.  C."  He 
had  so  good  a  dinner  that  he  dwells  on  the  prolonged  dis- 
tention of  his  waistband.     It  was  seasoned  with  "some 


Holiday  Joys  i35 

good  laughs"  and  after  it  he  walked  down  Sixth  Avenue 
home,  reflecting  gratefully:  "I  have  my  job,  while  lots 
of  poor  fellows  are  getting  down  and  out  since  money  has 
grown  so  scarce."  He  realized  that  his  position  was 
growing  strong  on  The  Evening  Sim  and  he  encloses  the 
clipping  of  a  story  which  made  him  feel  "mighty  good" 
because  "most  of  the  men  in  the  ofEce  submitted  Thanks- 
giving stories  and  mine  was  the  only  one  used."  The 
heading  of  the  story  was  Coon  Landed  in  the  Punch-bowl — 
But  It  Recalled  Old-Time  Thanksgiving  Hunt — So  the  Major 
Didn't  Mind.  It  was  a  spirited  sketch  of  Southern  life  of 
about  fifteen  hundred  words. 

Christmas  day  was  another  occasion  for  letter  writing. 
The  celebration  began  the  evening  before  when  he  and  two 
other  reporters  went  to  Madame  Volanti's  on  Eleventh 
street — cherished  resort  of  young  and  economical  Bohemia. 
"There,  with  our  feet  in  the  saw^dust  and  our  heads  full  of 
vino  we  had  a  very  large  Christmas  eve.  After  dinner  I 
came  home  and  read  The  Scarlet  Letter! ' '  Evidently  the 
vino  was  moderate  in  quality  and  quantity.  To  get  rid  of 
lonesomeness  he  went  out  walking  at  1 1  o'clock  and  met 
two  college  mates  "neither  of  whom  I  had  any  idea  was 
within  five  hundred  miles  of  New  York."  They  "made 
a  bright  streak  along  Broadway"  but  got  home  safe 
though  late.  The  day  brought  another  University  friend 
and  the  best  dinner  money  could  buy  with  him  and 
Doohan.  New  Year's  Day  was  marked  by  only  two  reso- 
lutions: to  write  fewer  letters  and  sleep  more — both  of 
which  he  renewed  frequently,  but  neither  of  which  he  kept. 

He  also  spent  his  twenty -fourth  birthday,  January  15, 
1908,  alone  in  the  big  city.  The  previous  day,  he  wrote: 
"I  am  sure  that  I  am  much  younger  to-day  than  when  I 
came  to  New  York  City.  Pretty  old,  though,  it  seems  for 
a  fellow  just  starting  out  in  life  with  the  foundation  to  lay 
still  and  everything  to  make.     But  it  might  be  worse. 


136  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

My  start  is  at  least  not  discouraging."  He  touches  again 
on  the  subject  of  his  age  in  a  letter  written  just  a  month 
laterand  speaks  of  himself,  oddly,  as  "almost  twenty-five." 
He  adds,  "not  so  many  years,  but  probably  half  of  the 
number  that  will  be  allotted  to  me."  He  could  have  no 
vision  then  that  he  had  hardly  more  than  ten  ahead  of  him, 
nor  of  the  great  cause  that  was  to  make  his  death  a  greater 
achievement  than  his  life. 

During  all  these  months  when  he  walked  the  ways  of  a 
young  Bohemian  and  gradually  assimilated  the  manners 
of  the  city  and  the  technics  of  his  craft,  his  heart  was  never 
wholly  detached  from  the  scenes  of  his  childhood  and 
youth.  His  longing  for  the  woods,  and  birds  and  flowers 
has  been  seen.  His  letters  are  full  of  affectionate  recollec- 
tions of  home.  His  faith  as  a  Tar  Heel  was  also  quite 
invincible.  He  met  all  sorts  of  North  Carolinians,  exiles 
like  himself,  and  his  interest  in  them  was  vivid.  One  of 
them,  Charles  Katzenstein  by  name,  was  a  post-graduate 
student  at  Columbia,  and  in  March  took  part  in  an  inter- 
collegiate debate: 

Well,  Katzenstein  lost  out,  but  it  was  his  team-mate's  fault; 
he  did  more  than  his  part.  I  certainly  felt  proud  that  a  North 
Carolina  man  could  make  such  a  show  against  men  from  big 
universities.  He  was  about  the  best  on  deck.  .  .  .  Neither 
the  Columbia  nor  the  Pennsylvania  team  put  up  such  a  debate 
as  a  Carolina  pair  can.  U.  N.  C.  may  be  a  little  place  and 
tucked  into  the  backwoods  but  it  is  not  without  its  uses  just  the 
same. 

A  visit  made  by  Rae  Logan  to  New  York  in  June  was  a 
gala  event.  They  had  a  rollicking  time  which  included 
everything  from  the  Metropolitan  Museum  to  Coney 
Island  and  the  Bronx  Zoo.  It  was  all  too  short  to  suit 
Mills.  Yet  they  went  such  a  pace  of  sightseeing  that 
Quincy  wrote  to  his  mother  on  a  picture  postal  card: 


Vital  Speculation  i37 

"Rae  left  this  morning.  It  was  a  pretty  good  thing  for 
me.  We  ran  ourselves  about  to  death  and  he  didn't  have 
to  go  to  work.  That  last  night  at  Coney  was  a  dazzler." 
He  tells  his  mother  that  he  sits  down  and  goes  through 
his  Landmark,  the  Statesville  newspaper,  first  thing  on  its 
arrival.  This  is  evident  all  through  the  letters  as  he 
many  times  comments  sympathetically  on  the  personal 
news  he  finds  in  it,  as  also  that  conveyed  in  his  mother's 
letters.  Many  of  these  expressions  are  too  intimate  for 
quotation.  All  show  strong  family  attachment  and 
warm  sentiments  toward  old  friends,  also,  perhaps,  an 
occasional  dash  of  acidity  as  regards  persons  not  so  re- 
garded. One  passage  may  be  given  for  the  sake  of  its 
revelation  of  his  own  attitude  on  the  most  vital  of  all 
questions.  The  letter  is  undated,  but  is  postmarked 
March  9,  1908.     He  writes; 

After  your  apprising  me  of  his  condition  I  was  not  surprised 
to  learn  of  Mr.  Dowd's  death.  How  sorry  I  feel  for  "Miss 
Fannie."  When  people  are  happy  together,  how  unjust  it 
seems  that  they  should  be  parted,  but  I  believe  that  is  usually 
the  way.  Why  must  everybody  be  always  unhappy?  Peace 
seems  denied  to  all  alike.  The  threadbare  explanation  of 
original  sin  doesn't  appeal  to  me.  There  is  too  much  of  such 
stuff  in  religion — or  dogma,  rather — as  people  make  it.  Omar  s 
view. 

What,  by  his  helpless  creature  be  repaid 
Pure  gold  for  what  he  lent  him  dross  allayed ! 

And  so  on,  appeals  to  me  much  more  just  here. 

The  love  of  family  and  home  gives  tone  and  color  to 
every  experience.  His  watchful  care  as  to  his  parents,  his 
desire  for  a  resumption  of  the  old  united  life  assert  them- 
selves over  and  over  again.  His  father's  health  was  not 
good  at  this  time  and  he  repeatedly  urged  an  operation 


138  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

that  promised  to  effect  a  cure.  He  returns  to  the  subject 
at  every  opportunity.  Finally  his  advice  was  taken  with 
the  happiest  results.  The  operation  was  performed  with- 
out any  forewarning  to  him  in  order  to  spare  him  anxiety. 
His  reply  to  the  letter  telling  of  its  success  was  a  cry  from 
the  heart,  compounded  of  simple  affection  and  opti- 
mistic good  sense,  though  he  was  reproachful  over  the 
concealment. 

His  father's  Statesville  business  also  gave  him  concern 
and  he  advised  that  advantage  be  taken  of  a  prosperous 
period  to  dispose  of  it  and  transfer  the  headquarters  of  the 
family  permanently  to  New  York.  His  advice  was  finally 
adopted,  but  before  that  came  to  pass,  Quincy  himself 
made  not  one,  but  two  flittings.  The  heat  and  noise  and 
swelter  of  lower  New  York  became  intolerable  to  him  in 
May,  and  he  took  a  room  at  No.  353  West  1 19th  Street,  in 
a  pleasant  house  kept  by  a  Mrs.  Collins.  He  had  a  larger 
and  better  furnished  room  at  a  small  increase  of  cost.  ' '  I 
got  out,"  he  says.  "The  purpose  hit  me  one  day,  and  I 
moved  the  next."  His  friend  Katzenstein  was  already 
there.  ' '  You  cannot  imagine  what  a  difference  there  is  in 
the  noise, ' '  he  writes ;  and  again :  ' '  The  feel  of  the  air  is  an 
encouragement  to  work  in  itself." 

Of  course,  he  became  interested  in  all  the  cats  of  the 
neighborhood.  The  neatly  sodded  and  planted  back- 
yards were  a  feast  to  his  eye  in  contrast  with  the  anti- 
quated squalor  of  Washington  Place  and  vicinity.  He 
took  lively  notice  of  the  ways  of  the  surrounding  popu- 
lation, especially  the  "free  vaudeville  show"  furnished 
nightly  "long  about  bedtime"  by  an  unconscious  young 
lady  across  the  block  until  a  spontaneous  burst  of  applause 
from  some  young  fellows  caused  her  to  pull  down  the 
blinds.  In  these  letters  of  Mills's  not  only  his  own  life  but 
the  everyday  incidents  of  all  life  in  New  York  stand  out 
with  realistic  vividness. 


Bachelor  Housekeeping  139 

The  only  drawback  to  the  new  quarters  seems  to  have 
been  a  plague  of  mosquitoes  that  year.  He  describes 
Hariem  as  smelling  like  "a  colossal  joss-house"  because  of 
the  incense  sticks  that  girls  wore  in  their  hair  and  every- 
one carried  about  to  ward  them  off,  and  in  spite  of  which 
"staccato  whacks  constantly  resounded  through  the 
evening  air."  However,  he  was  utterly  tired  of  boarding 
house  experience.  He  had  had  four  years  of  it  at  Chapel 
Hill  as  a  prelude  to  almost  a  year  in  New  York.  He  now 
determined  on  a  totally  new  experiment  and  with  a  friend, 
a  young  New  Englander,  a  civil  engineer  and  a  graduate  of 
Cornell,  he  took,  on  August  i,  a  small  apartment  at  No. 
161  Manhattan  Avenue,  where  he  remained  until  the 
complete  reunion  of  the  family  in  October. 

The  apartment  was  sublet,  furnished,  and,  of  course, 
there  was  a  cat.  Buster,  "whom"  Perry,  the  Cornell  man, 
did  not  appreciate  as  much  as  Mills.  There  was  a  com- 
plete kitchen  and  the  two  cooked  their  own  meals.  Mills 
reveled  in  their  bills  of  fare,  one  of  which  he  gives :  "broiled 
steak  (best  sort),  baked  potatoes,  toast,  tomatoes,  lettuce, 
milk,  tea,  crullers  and  fruit."  He  further  explains: 
"We  vary  every  night.  Sometimes  our  piece  de  resistance 
is  pork  chops,  again  it  is  sausage  or  fish.  We  have  fried 
potatoes,  with  onions  to  match,  egg  toast,  etc.  The  only 
rule  of  the  house  is  that  whoever  mentions  boiled  potatoes 
or  pot  roast  gets  pitched  down  the  dumbwaiter  shaft." 
This  was,  of  course,  an  anti-boarding  house  reaction. 
They  ' '  started  dinner  after  six  and  had  the  dishes  stacked 
by  eight,"  so  the  evening  was  clear  for  reading,  writing  or 
going  out.  Buster,  by  the  way,  was  only  a  kitten  at  the 
start  and  had  a  teddy  bear  to  play  with.  He  was  a 
jealous  cat  and  if  Mills  petted  the  bear.  Buster  sprang 
upon  it  and  rent  it  with  his  claws.  An  orchestra  in 
a  caf6  nearby  accompanied  all  the  proceedings  with 
varied    selections,    from   Tr  ova  tore  to  the    Merry   Wid, 


140  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

Quincy  and  his  friend  occupied  the  apartment  until 
November  i . 

One  of  the  concerns  that  tried  him  as  this  first  year  in 
New  York  wore  on  was  his  maiden  vote.  He  was  resolved 
not  to  cast  it  for  Mr.  Taft;  but  Colonel  W.  J.  Bryan 
appealed  to  him  even  less.  He  talked  in  his  letters  of 
throwing  it  away  on  the  Prohibition  candidate,  but  there 
is  no  clue  as  to  how  he  finally  decided.  Perhaps  he  moved 
so  often  that  year  that  he  was  not  qualified  to  register  when 
the  time  came. 

At  one  period  he  had  been  attracted  by  socialistic 
theories,  at  least  to  the  extent  of  examining  and  analyzing 
them.  His  strong  common  sense  and  logical  faculty  saved 
him  from  their  lure.  The  cure  was  made  perfect  by  a 
visit  on  Easter  Sunday  to  the  Church  of  the  Ascension, 
where  the  Rev.  Percy  Stickney  Grant  was  endeavoring  to 
mingle  radicalism  with  the  Gospel.  ' '  I  once  thought, ' '  he 
wrote  home,  "that  I  might  have  some  rudiments  of 
socialism  in  my  make-up.  Not  so!  Please  excuse  me 
from  anything  savoring  of  the  brand  I  heard  last  night." 
In  a  letter  to  his  father  he  was  even  more  contemptuous  of 
the  hybrid  cult.  He  almost  got  to  the  point  of  calling 
names. 


CHAPTER  V 

Activities  and  Acquaintances  of  a  Star  Reporter — Roosevelt  and 
MiTCHEL — College  Debts  Paid  Off — Conventions  and  Vacations 
— Religious  Stirrings. 

Mr.  Mills  finally  broke  away  from  Statesville  for  good 
and  all  and  returned  to  New  York.  He  arrived  on 
September  i8  or  19,  1908,  as  indicated  by  a  card  from 
Quincy  to  his  mother,  postmarked  the  19th,  5  p.m.,  and 
expressing  pleasure  at  his  father's  looking  to  be  "in  better 
shape  than  I  have  seen  him  in  years."  Mr.  Mills  formed 
a  business  connection  at  once,  as  Quincy  wrote  to  his 
mother.  Mrs.  Mills  remained  with  relatives  in  States- 
ville until  October  when  she  came  to  New  York.  The 
family  was  once  more  reunited  at  the  beginning  of  Novem- 
ber and  the  old  life,  with  necessary  modifications,  was 
resumed  in  an  apartment  on  Washington  Heights. 

This  was  indeed  a  happy  change  for  all  three  of  this  long 
separated  group,  but  it  was  by  no  means  so  fortunate  for 
the  present  narrative,  since,  with  the  cessation  of  Quincy's 
letters  home,  the  great  source  of  firsthand  information 
regarding  his  ways  of  living,  his  modes  of  thought,  his 
expanding  mind  and  character  is  cut  off.  However,  from 
sundry  sources,  scrapbooks  and  newspaper  clippings,  a 
few  notes  and  postcards  and  a  diary  in  which  he  jotted 
down  fitfully  some  of  his  doings  in  1 910, 191 1,  and  the  early 
part  of  1 9 12,  some  light  can  be  extracted. 

One  thing  which  exercised  him  greatly  was  the  search 
for  a  religious  or  spiritual  anchorage.     It  has  been  seen 

141 


142  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

that  old-fashioned  orthodoxy  had  no  appeal  for  him.  He 
visited  many  churches  of  many  sects  and  listened  eagerly. 
He  came  away  unsatisfied.  He  gave  a  trial  of  some  du- 
ration to  the  Ethical  Culture  Association  and  he  has  left 
a  large  collection  of  its  tracts  and  pamphlets,  some  of  them 
marked,  showing  careful  study.  He  also  experimented 
with  Unitarianism  but  got  no  satisfaction  to  his  soul.  At 
the  same  time,  he  read  deeply  on  religious  questions.  Is 
Life  Worth  Living?  by  William  James  was  one  of  the  books ; 
another  was  Ethics  of  the  New  Testament  by  David  Saville 
Muzzey.  He  read  Matthew  Arnold's  God  and  the  Bible  and 
Andrew  Lang's  Myth,  Ritual  and  Religious,  simultane- 
ously. The  latter,  he  found  the  less  interesting  and  rated 
it  as  material  for  future  thought.  Arnold's  work  he  pro- 
nounced ' '  as  near  to  being  a  perfect  statement  of  the  hazy 
religious  views  we  [himself  and  his  mother]  have  attempted 
to  discuss  together  as  I  expect  ever  to  find.  .  .  .  After 
calmly  demolishing  the  personal  God  theory,  the  miracular 
and  the  metaphysical  bases  upon  which  all  so-called  ortho- 
dox Biblical  interpretation  is  founded,  he  starts  in  to  show 
that  while  these  are  all  wrong  there  is  in  the  Bible  the 
foundation  for  all  the  comfort,  all  the  encouragement  and 
the  inspiration  that  is  claimed  for  it  and  much  more.  .  .  . 
At  this  juncture,  about  all  the  harvest  I  have  reaped  is 
that  I  came  like  water  and  like  wind  I  go — of  which  I 
already  had  an  abundant  crop  ready  garnered  and  in 
storage."  He  concluded:  "While  Arnold  made  it  very 
clear  as  to  what  I  should  not  believe,  he  gave  me  little 
assistance  in  a  positive  direction,  just  as  I  feared.  Further- 
more, I  don't  beHeve  anybody  ever  will." 

The  upshot  was  that  he  adhered  to  no  sect  and  joined  no 
spiritual  organization.  Soon  his  quest  after  a  clear  light 
ceased.  He  settled  into  a  state  of  quietude — not  without 
a  latent  interest  in  the  great  issue — and  a  receptive  calm. 
He  pitched  his  life  according  to  the  high  ideals  which  he 


Thoughts  of  Two  Worlds  143 

had  cultivated  and  trusted  to  destiny  or  Providence  for  the 
outcome.  In  this  respect,  he  adopted  the  attitude  of  more 
than  one  of  his  forbears  of  the  Scotch-Irish  strain. 
Wundt's  Principles  of  Morality  had  been  a  favorite  of  his 
since  college  days  and  Victor  Hugo's  Intellectual  Autobiog- 
raphy became  and  remained  a  sort  of  vade  mecum  to 
him  as  to  things  of  higher  import.  He  sent  a  copy  of  the 
Hugo  to  his  mother  as  a  Christmas  present  in  1907  with  a 
letter  in  which  he  says :  "I  am  sending  you  a  book  that 
you  will  like.  I  am  more  daffy  about  it  than  you  are 
about  Shaw.  .  .  .  Knowing  that  you  wouldn't  object, 
I  have  marked  it  well.  .  .  .  Note  especially  the  develop- 
ment of  the  theme  in  'Supreme  Contemplations'  and  the 
ideals  of  religion  and  the  Deity  expressed  in  'Life  and 
Death,'  'Things  of  the  Infinite'  and  'God.'  The  'Thoughts' 
are  full  of  meat  too.  The  things  we  have  talked  over,  many 
of  them,  you  will  find  identical  with  the  views  expressed." 
More  has  to  be  said  of  this  further  on.  These  works  and 
Browning's  poems  were  the  steady  companions  and  coun- 
sellors for  years  of  his  hours  of  thought  and  study. 

At  the  same  time  his  thoughts  were  not  all  of  another 
world.  He  was  very  much  alive  and  very  human.  Just 
one  more  extract  from  a  letter  written  to  his  mother  shortly 
before  the  family  reunion,  to  illustrate  his  attitude  of 
mind;  after  speaking  incredulously  of  the  report  that  a 
cousin  was  on  the  road  to  matrimony,  Quincy  writes : 

When  Durand  puts  on  a  high  collar  and  starts,  right  then 
am  I  going  to  get  busy  and  find  a  maiden  before  they  all  get 
mortgaged.  When  he  gets  excited,  it  will  be  high  time  to 
hurry.  Speaking  of  your  future  daughter-in-law,  you  needn't 
worry  yourself  to  any  marvellous  extent  on  that  subject.  She 
hasn't  been  roped  yet.  But  you  had  better  nerve  yourself 
against  the  time  when  she  is  cornered,  for  I  am  going  to  do  it 
all  at  once  and  the  first  you  will  know  about  it  will  be  when  I 
lead  her  up  in  front  of  you  and  say:  "Maw!    Here  she  is;  I 


144  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

hope  you'll  love  each  other."  Then,  while  I  go  around  the 
corner,  it  will  be  up  to  you  two  to  fall  upon  each  other's 
necks. 

Considering  the  success  his  verse  writing  had  at  college 
and  an  undoubted  facility  in  metre  and  rhyme,  it  is  odd 
that  he  made  little  or  no  effort  to  utilize  the  gift  after 
reaching  New  York.  Just  once  he  tried  his  hand  on  a 
merry  bit  for  the  comic  weeklies,  but  unsuccessfully. 
Indeed  he  seems  to  have  taken  less  pains  than  with  his 
earlier  trials  and  to  have  fallen  short  of  their  technical 
merits.  However,  as  the  piece  illustrates  his  attitude 
of  mind  at  this  time,  it  is  interesting  for  biographical  if 
not  for  poetic  reasons.  It  will  be  observed  that  he 
follows  here,  as  in  his  lines  to  the  college  bell,  the  Maiid 
Muller  rhyming  of  the  participle  "been": 

It's  Different 

It's  different,  very  different. 

Or  so  the  critics  say, 
With  the  poets  and  the  nearly-verse 

Hashed  out  by  them  to-day 
And  the  bards  whose  liquid  measures 

Were  once  well  worth  the  pay — 
Beyond  a  doubt  the  signs  all  point 

To  poesy's  decay. 

No  denying  that  it's  different, 

But,  granting  this  decline 
And  that  the  rhymesters  of  the  hour 

Have  missed  the  drink  divine, 
When  Sappho  trilled  the  lyric  muse 

And  Virgil  wrote  his  line 
The  vintners  hadn't  learned  to  put 

Condensed  lye  in  their  wine. 

And  it  very  rarely  happened, 
'Way  back  in  Homer's  time, 


The  Merry  Muse  i45 

That  you  had  to  dodge  a  taxicab 

While  digging  out  your  rhyme; 
And  when  Maecenas  read  the  dope 

'Twas  easy  work  to  climb, 
For  he  passed  out  a  bag  of  gold 

Where  now  they  toss  a  dime. 

And  Horace,  Ovid,  and  the  bunch, 

At  verses  all  so  pat. 
Had  to  pound  no  bucking  typers 

After  going  on  a  bat ; 
Nor  did  Dante's  ideal  ever  wear 

A  Merry  Widow  hat, 
Or  Shakespeare's  have  to  dink  it  in 

A  five-room  Harlem  flat. 

Now  all  this  makes  a  difference — 

You  bet  it  does — and  when 
We  poets  dream  of  bygone  times 

And  sigh  for  what  has  been. 
We  know  full  well  those  golden  days 

Are  not  to  come  again 
For  this  is  proof,  ah,  era  bkst, 

There  were  no  critics  then! 

The  last  time  he  ever  tried  his  hand  at  verse  was  in  a 
few  burlesque  stanzas,  left  unfinished.  They  were 
written  apropos  of  a  visit  which  the  mother  and  sister  of 
his  partner  in  the  apartment  housekeeping  enterprise 
made  to  them.  They  are  quite  informing  in  their  way  as 
well  as  jocund,  so  a  few  stanzas  from  the  fragment  of  Ye 
Ballade  of  Ye  Fayre  Cookye  may  be  interesting : 

Ye  cookye  came  from  Boston  towne, 

In  ye  nicke  o'  tyme  came  she ; 
Ye  batch  club  bunch  was  lyke  to  drowne 

To  end  their  misery. 


146  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

Their  toast  was  burnt,  their  steak  was  tough, 

Their  jaws,  they  ached  full  sore; 
Ye  table  talk  at  tymes  waxed  rough, 
She  should  have  come  before. 

Ye  cookye  looked  ye  place  about, 

And  rolled  up  both  her  sleeves ; 
Ye  grime  and  grease  she  put  to  rout, 

As  wynde  ye  autumn  leaves. 

Ye  cookye  doffed  her  coat  of  blue, 

(Oh,  she  was  f ayre  to  see !) 
She  pursed  her  lips  with  purpose  true 

And  said:  "Leave  this  to  me." 

Ye  pots  and  pans,  they  whirled  around, 

As  by  a  cyclone  spun; 
Ye  neighbors  at  ye  fearsome  sound, 

Brought  firemen  on  ye  run. 

Pity  there  is  no  more  of  it.  It  was  just  a  skit,  but  it 
was  characteristic.  From  this  time  on.  Mills  had  no  time 
for  poetry.  He  threw  all  his  energies  into  his  true 
vocation.  He  was  consumingly  busy  with  newspaper 
prose. 

He  made  steady  progress  in  The  Evening  Sun  office.  He 
gained  a  reputation  for  wide  awakeness  and  for  accuracy. 
His  writing  improved  rapidly.  He  had  lightness  of 
touch,  clearness  and  vivacity  of  style.  Higher  and 
higher  grades  of  work  were  entrusted  to  him  and  with 
them  came  successive  increases  of  pay;  he  had  one  in  1909 
and  two  in  19 10.  These  enabled  him  to  throw  off  one 
burden.  It  will  be  recalled  that  he  was  in  debt  for  a 
large  part  of  the  expense  of  his  education  and  his  coming 
to  New  York  and  it  has  been  seen  how  he  paid  off  his  loans 
at  the  Statesville  bank  out  of  his  correspondence  and 
special  work  for  the  Charlotte  Observer.     He  was  reducing 


Sound  in  Business  i47 

simultaneously  out  of  his  New  York  earnings  debts  to 
friends  who  had  helped  him.  These  being  disposed  of,  he 
took  up  several  notes  that  he  had  given  to  the  University 
of  North  Carolina  for  tuition  fees.  The  last  of  these,  two 
notes  for  $30  each,  dated  January  4, 1906,  and  January  i, 
1907,  he  paid  in  January,  1910.  A  letter  from  Mr.  A.  E. 
Woltz,  the  Bursar,  acknowledges  receipt  of  the  draft  on  the 
29th,  adding:  "This  covers  your  entire  account  with  us,  so 
far  as  we  know." 

Mrs.  Mills  in  writing  of  this  matter  points  out  the 
difficulty  Quincy  must  have  had  in  accomplishing  this 
end  out  of  the  slender  salary  which  he  had  been  receiving 
down  to  this  time.  It  was  a  feat  of  resolution  and  self- 
sacrifice.  "How  we  did  celebrate  when  it  was  finally 
paid  off ! "  she  says.  Mills  never  again  went  into  debt  for 
anything.  He  had  a  horror  of  owing  money  and  though  he 
often  helped  others,  he  never  borrowed.  He  was  exact 
and  careful  in  business  matters  and  at  the  same  time 
generous  and  liberal.  By  saving  and  investment  he 
gathered  in  the  eight  years  which  he  had  still  to  live  a 
substantial  estate,  yet  he  had  always  money  available  for 
every  proper  purpose.  His  mother  owned  considerable 
property  in  North  Carolina,  a  house  in  Statesville,  and 
timber  lands  approaching  maturity  but  as  yet  providing 
no  income.  The  taxes  on  these  holdings  was  a  heavy 
liability.  * '  Just  as  soon  as  the  burden  of  debt  was  removed 
from  his  shoulders,"  Mrs.  Mills  records,  "Quincy  relieved 
me  of  the  expense  of  keeping  up  the  taxes  and  assessments. 
Otherwise  I  could  not  have  held  the  property  so  as  to 
secure  its  full  value.  What  a  mockery  it  is  to  have  the 
profit  now,  when  he  is  not  here  to  share  it." 

The  career  of  a  crack  reporter  is  very  little  more  than  a 
summary  of  the  news  from  day  to  day.  It  would  be  an 
endless  and  essentially  a  tedious  process  to  follow  all  the 


148  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

details  of  Mills's  activities.  He  remained  in  charge  of  the 
Curb  Market  only  a  short  time — until  January,  1909. 
It  was  seen  that  he  was  thrown  away  on  mere  copying  of 
figures.  He  was  next  assigned  to  general  reporting  and 
was  employed  on  all  the  leading  events  with  a  constantly 
accentuated  slant  toward  politics. 

Walter  L.  Hawley,  the  regular  City  Hall  reporter  for 
The  Evening  Sun,  was  in  failing  health  about  that  time. 
He  was  frequently  unable  to  cover  the  field  and  Mills  was 
constantly  sent  over  to  help  him.  Unhappily  he  died  in 
the  early  part  of  the  year  and  from  that  time  until  191 5 
Mills  was  in  charge  of  the  department  save  when  detached 
for  special  duty.  April  13  was  the  first  day  on  which  he 
supplied  all  the  news  from  "the  Hall";  it  was  not  an  un- 
lucky date  for  him.  He  began  with  four  long  display 
head  articles.  Work  never  frightened  him.  He  supplied 
reams  of  copy,  grave  and  gay.  George  B.  McClellan 
was  Mayor  at  the  time.  Mills  therefore  served  at  the  City 
Hall  during  the  terms  of  three  chief  magistrates,  Mc- 
Clellan, Judge  Gaynor  and  John  Purroy  Mitchel.  He  had 
the  confidence  and  good  will  of  all  three. 

By  the  time  the  fall  of  1909  arrived,  he  was  rated  one 
of  the  best  men  on  The  Evening  Sun  staff.  This  is  shown 
by  the  fact  that  he  was  one  of  those  assigned  to  "cover" 
the  Hudson-Fulton  Celebration,  which  ran  from  Septem- 
ber 25  to  October  9,  an  event  of  national,  indeed  of 
international  importance,  seeing  that  squadrons  of  war- 
ships from  all  parts  of  the  world  as  well  as  a  great  Ameri- 
can fleet  participated.  His  press  card,  admitting  him 
everywhere,  is  among  his  souvenirs.  His  scrapbooks  show 
that  he  did  much  of  the  principal  narrative  and  descrip- 
tive work.  Besides,  he  suggested  a  column  of  ' '  Sidelights 
on  the  Big  Show,"  a  daily  collection  of  short  anecdotes 
of  spectators'  experiences  and  incidental  sketches  of  the 
visitors  who  thronged  to   New  York.     The  idea  w^as 


Hudson-Fulton  Sketches  149 

adopted,  and  Mills  won  much  commendation  for  it. 
Hundreds  of  amusing  items  resulted,  of  which  he  himself 
wrote  a  large  number.  The  * '  feature ' '  was  a  great  success 
for  the  paper.  This  sort  of  matter  is  for  the  most  part  but 
of  momentary  interest,  but  here  is  a  paragraph  of  his 
that  has  a  lasting  suggestion : 

One  of  the  things  that  will  be  missed  most  [after  the  show] 
will  be  the  musical  jangle  of  the  ships'  bells  striking  out  the 
hours,  especially  during  the  night.  Not  that  the  Harlemites 
haven't  clocks  to  keep  them  posted  as  to  the  time  without 
reference  to  the  sailorman's  six  or  eight  bells,  but  then  there  is 
something  pleasing  about  hearing  those  strokes  ring  out  on  the 
still  night  air,  beginning  so  far  up  the  river  as  to  be  scarcely 
audible  and  passing  on  from  ship  to  ship  by  bells,  no  two  of 
which  have  the  same  tone,  until  they  are  lost  in  the  opposite 
distance.  It  is  surprising  how  far  those  chimes  can  penetrate 
at  night,  and  how  they  have  come  to  be  the  customary  thing. 
It  will  be  hard  to  get  along  without  them. 

Some  of  the  items  were  mere  quips  or  jests : 

The  float  "  Titania"  was  passing  and  the  pair  who  looked  as 
if  they  might  be  a  trifle  weak  on  literary  information  were 
studying  the  pantomine  of  Bottom  and  the  Fairy  Queen  with 
manifest  interest. 

"What  do  you  make  of  it,  hey.  Bill?"  inquired  No.  i. 

"That,"  replied  Bill,  who  had  evidently  fared  badly  of  late 
in  the  lists  of  love,  "why,  that  means  that  any  feller  as  gets 
daffy  over  a  woman  ought  to  have  a  donkey's  head  stuck  on 
his  neck." 

And  Shakespeare  being  interpreted,  the  float  passed  on. 

A  diner  at  a  restaurant  in  show  week  looked  rather  blue 
when  he  received  his  check. 

"What's  the  matter,  old  man?"  asked  a  man  near  him. 
"Broke?" 


150  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

"Not  yet,  friend,"  replied  the  sorrowful  one,  "  but  I'm — well, 
bent." 

And  again : 

In  front  of  his  place  of  business  an  enterprising  saloon 
keeper  uptown  has  hung  this  sign,  brilliantly  studded  with 
electric  lights  and  with  a  hand  pointing  to  his  door :  "  To  the 
warships." 

"He's  about  right,"  said  one  man  who  read  the  sign.  "One 
schooner  is  harmless  enough,  but  a  sufficient  number  of  them 
can  certainly  start  a  handsome  battle." 

As  the  years  wore  on,  politics,  as  distinguished  from 
municipal  routine,  began  to  figure  more  and  more  in  the 
clippings  which  Mills  made  of  his  work  and  of  which  his 
mother  has  a  large  collection.  We  have  seen  that  he 
developed  his  first  interest  in  politics  as  a  boy  at  his 
mother's  knee  when  she  read  aloud  to  his  grandmother 
the  transactions  of  the  North  Carolina  Legislature. 
"When  he  took  up  journalism  as  an  occupation  he  had 
the  ultimate  purpose  of  making  it  a  road  to  public  life; 
he  never  gave  up  that  idea  and  he  purposely  specialized 
on  politics  as  a  method  of  approach  toward  his  goal.  His 
first  large  experience  was  in  the  municipal  election  of  1909 
when  William  J.  Gaynor,  the  Democratic  nominee,  was 
victorious  over  Otto  T.  Bannard  in  a  super-heated  mayor- 
alty contest. 

Mayor  Gaynor  was  inaugurated  on  January  i,  1910,  and 
Mills  had  curious  experiences  with  him,  as  everyone  had. 
Of  these  something  is  recorded  in  the  diary  which  he  kept 
by  fits  and  starts  that  year.  On  Tuesday,  January  4, 
this  entry  occurs :  ' '  Informed  by  Mayor  Gaynor  that  I 
had  no  manners."  The  explanation  appears  on  January 
8:  "The  Mayor's  objection  to  my  manners  was  that  I 
held  him  up  on  the  portico  of  the  City  Hall.     He  didn't 


Clashes  with  Gay  nor  151 

like  that  way  of  applying  for  news.     But  he  will  have 
to  get  used  to  it." 

This  was  rather  a  rough  beginning,  but  the  Mayor  soon 
came  around,  as  witness  this  note: 

March  15,  Tues:  Mayor  Gaynor's  dinner  at  the  Hotel 
Knickerbocker.  Will  not  soon  forget  how  he  proved  himself 
to  be  a  judge  of  good  wine  as  well  as  a  scholar  and  jurist.  He 
did  me  the  honor  to  remark  that  The  Evening  Sun  printed  the 
most  intelligent  news  from  the  City  Hall.  Wonder  when  he 
is  planning  to  kick  me. 

The  Mayor's  oddities  of  temper  were  well  known. 
However,  relations  went  on  improving : 

April  5,  Tues:  Mayor  Ga3mor  complimented  me  by  asking 
me  to  brief  a  story  for  him.  "I  have  noticed  that  your  stories 
are  mighty  accurate  and  I  want  to  get  this  one  right." 

The  inevitable  "hitch"  soon  came,  also  its  rebound: 

April  22,  Fri:  Another  compliment  from  Mhyor  Gaynor. 
This  time  I  was  a  liar,  or,  at  least,  a  near-liar.     Am  getting 

into  favor.     Gaynor  accused of  being  a  thief  and  then 

made  him .     What  is  being  reserved  for  me  ? 

April  23,  Sat:  Today  the  Mayor  stopped  me  in  the  corridor 
to  sop  over  his  slip  of  yesterday.  Said  I  handled  the  excise 
question  better  than  anyone  else.  What  a  joke !  The  trouble 
was  that  he  didn't  like  the  way  I  reported  his  address  at  the 
Chamber  of  Commerce.  The  truth  is  not  always  pleasant  to 
see  in  print. 

July  12,  Tues:  With  Mayor  Gaynor  in  his  automobile  up 
to  De  Witt  Clinton  Park  to  see  the  children  on  their  "farms." 
Mr.  Gaynor  was  as  gracious  as  it  is  in  his  nature  to  be. 

Mills  was  away  on  vacation  when  Mayor  Gaynor  was 
shot  on  the  deck  of  a  ship  at  a  Hoboken  pier  as  he  was 


152  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

about  to  sail  for  Europe.  On  his  return,  on  August  30, 
19 10,  he  wrote :  ' '  Learned  that  while  I  was  away  Gay  nor 
expressed  the  opinion  that  I  promised  more  than  any  of 
the  reporters  at  the  Hall  as  to  prospects." 

He  grew  in  the  Mayor's  esteem  steadily,  down  to  the 
latter's  death  in  September,  1913.  The  Mayor  con- 
sidered appointing  him  to  one  of  the  minor  commissioner- 
ships  in  the  city  government.  Mr.  Robert  Adamson,  who 
was  transferred  from  the  post  of  Secretary  to  the  Mayor 
to  that  of  Fire  Commissioner,  urged  Mills  not  once  but 
twice  to  become  his  secretary ;  but  Mills  realized  that  he 
had  not  yet  gone  his  full  way  in  journalism,  and  declined. 
These  were  only  the  first  of  several  offers  he  had  to  enter 
politics  by  way  of  office-holding.  Besides  several  offers 
from  the  Municipal  service,  in  April,  19 14,  Mr.  Eugene 
Lamb  Richardson,  the  New  York  State  Superintendent  of 
Banking,  tried  to  woo  him  from  the  newspaper  field  into 
his  department. 

On  February  23,  1910,  Mills  was  sent  to  Albany  to 
report  the  struggle  between  ' '  Fingy ' '  Connors  and  Charles 
F.  Murphy  over  the  Chairmanship  of  the  Democratic 
State  Committee.  Incidentally  he  records  his  enjoyment 
of  the  frozen  Hudson  shining  in  the  light  of  a  full  moon. 
"You  did  damn  well  yesterday,"  was  Mr.  Cooper's  com- 
ment on  his  work  when  he  reported  at  the  office 
on  his  return.  As  to  his  early  experiences  at  Albany — 
they  became  varied — there  is  an  undated  letter,  also  with- 
out postmark,  which  gives  a  gloomy  impression  of  the 
standards  prevailing  there,  that  is  shared  by  many  news- 
paper men.     It  was  written  to  his  mother  and  in  it  he  said : 

Watching  the  legislature  working  has  been  interesting  and 
valuable.  After  witnessing  the  process  of  grinding  out  laws 
and  looking  over  the  sort  of  men  who  do  the  grinding,  anyone 
must  wonder,  not  that  laws  are  so  bad  but  that  they  are  no 
worse.  You  will  be  surprised  to  know  that  the  ablest  men  here 


Mills  and  Roosevelt  153 

are  the  Tammany  men,  and  likable  men  at  that.  Also  their 
morals  are  certainly  no  worse  than  those  of  their  Republican 
contemporaries. 

On  August  26  he  saw  the  end  of  the  Connors  fight  at  the 
HofTman  House,  when  the  redoubtable  "Fingy"  stepped 
down  and  John  A.  Dix  was  elected  to  succeed  him.  On 
August  16,  he  reported  the  meeting  of  the  Republican 
State  Committee  at  which  Colonel  Roosevelt,  as  he  puts 
it,  was  "repudiated  " ;  what  happened  was  that  his  choice 
for  Chairman  of  the  State  Convention  was  rejected. 

Mills  had  already  made  Colonel  Roosevelt's  acquaint- 
ance. It  was  on  June  i8,  upon  the  occasion  of  the 
spectacular  return  from  Africa.  "Saw  him  land  at  the 
Battery,"  reads  the  diary  entry.  "Quite  an  ovation. 
Whatever  one's  opinion  of  him,  the  Colonel  has  a  mighty 
winning  personality."  Mills  thought  enough  of  the  event 
to  keep  his  ticket  of  admission  to  Pier  A  as  a  memento. 

He  reported  the  Democratic  State  Convention  at 
Rochester  in  September.  It  was  his  first  experience 
of  the  kind.  Mayor  Gaynor's  withdrawal  as  a  candidate 
for  Governor  "knocked  all  the  interest  out  of  the  gather- 
ing. ...  If  this  is  a  sample,  I  care  for  no  more.  .  .  . 
About  the  hardest  and  least  satisfactory  job  I  ever 
tackled."  But  Mr.  Cooper  telegraphed  him:  "The 
report  of  convention  proceedings  is  just  what  we  want. 
Please  continue  throughout  in  this  style,  giving  a  picture 
of  what  is  doing."  Before  returning  home,  he  visited 
Niagara  Falls.  Plainly  he  was  out  of  sorts  for  he  writes : 
"The  American  Falls  disappointing." 

In  191 1,  following  up  his  Hudson-Fulton  hit,  he  in- 
vented a  column  which  he  first  called  "City  Hall  Notes" 
and  later  "At  the  City  Hall."  He  started  it  on  May  i6, 
and  it  ran  for  many  months.  He  took  great  pride  and 
great  pains  in  making  it  entertaining.     It  consisted  of 


154  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

short  items  between  dashes,  mainly  of  humorous  or  per- 
sonal interest.  This  was  an  off-year  in  politics,  but  the 
Subway  issue  was  a  burning  topic  of  municipal  news. 
Among  the  hundreds  of  squibs,  many  were  about  it.  One 
day  Colonel  Williams  of  the  Brooklyn  Rapid  Transit 
Company  visited  the  City  Hall.  Of  course  he  was  asked 
the  why  and  wherefore.  "I  hear,"  he  replied,  "they're 
giving  away  golden  apples  over  here."  Whereupon  an 
Interborough  man  commented,  "I  wonder  if  Williams 
knows  the  difference  between  an  apple  and  a  lemon." 

Mills  reported  the  entire  struggle  over  the  great  plans 
and  contracts.  It  ran  through  years  and  he  continued  to 
handle  it  in  Mayor  Mitchel's  term  when  the  "Dual  Con- 
tract" was  concluded  between  the  City  and  the  Inter- 
borough and  Brooklyn  Rapid  Transit  companies.  He 
became  an  expert  on  the  entire  subject  and  always  kept 
his  knowledge  up  to  date  to  the  close  of  his  service  for 
The  Evening  Sim. 

He  also  contributed  his  mite  to  an  amusing  controversy 
which  started  in  all  the  newspapers  that  year  and  has 
continued  intermittently  ever  since.  These  short  squibs 
show  him  in  his  mood  of  gayety : 

The  Library  Lions 

To  THE  Editor  of  The  Evening  Sun — Sir  :  The  minute  that  I 
laid  eyes  on  your  "library  lions"  I  felt  perfectly  at  home  on 
Fifth  Avenue.  We  have  thousands  of  just  such  beasts  run- 
ning loose  in  the  long  leaf  pine  woods  down  here.  We  call 
them  razorbacks.  M. 

Frog  Level,  Ga.,  July  24. 

To  the  Editor  of  The  Evening  Sun — Sir:  Your  concern 
as  to  the  species  of  the  animals  chosen  by  the  sculptor  to  grace 
either  side  of  the  entrance  to  your  new  Public  Library  is  all 
the  more  pitiable  in  that  it  displays  your  ignorance.  You 
have  evidently  never  seen  a  blind  tiger.     You  should  pay  a 


Reporting  the  Colonel  155 

visk  to  North  Carolina,  now  that  the  state  has  gone  dry.     I 
was  certain  of  the  identification  as  soon  as  I  saw  the  works  of 
art  in  question  on  my  recent  visit  to  your  city.    Tar  Heel. 
Charlotte,  N.  C,  July  25. 

From  the  time  of  Colonel  Roosevelt's  arrival  from 
Africa,  Mills  had  practically  a  monopoly  of  reporting  him 
for  The  Evening  Sun.  No  other  reporter,  when  he  could 
be  reached  until  he  graduated  into  editorial  work,  was 
ever  assigned  to  interview  the  Colonel,  or  describe  his 
doings.  He  came  to  like  the  Colonel  and  admire  him, 
but  w^as  never  swept  ofT  his  feet  into  the  ecstatic  pose  of  the 
true  and  utter  Rooseveltian.  He  had  a  clear  apprecia- 
tion of  Roosevelt's  force  and  ability,  but  he  was  often 
irritated  by  the  egotism  and  apparent  desire  to  settle 
everything  and  dictate  to  everybody,  which  estranged  so 
many  people.  One  thing  seems  to  have  surprised  him 
very  much,  a  frequent  disregard  of  formality.  He  spoke 
at  home  with  great  surprise  of  the  Colonel  kneeling  on  an 
armchair  and  leaning  over  the  back  of  it  as  he  talked  to 
the  newspaper  men  at  Sagamore  Hill.  He  was  never  in 
complete  sympathy  with  the  Colonel  until  the  latter  took 
up  his  great  fight  for  American  preparation  to  enter 
the  war. 

The  year  19 12  was  a  great  one  in  national  politics.  It 
was  the  year  of  the  tripartite  struggle  between  Woodrow 
Wilson,  President  Taft  and  Roosevelt  for  the  Presidency. 
All  through  the  months  before  the  Republican  convention 
and  again  until  the  close  of  the  campaign,  a  band  of  re- 
porters followed  the  "Progressive"  insurgent  leader  up 
and  down  the  country,  haunted  him  at  Oyster  Bay  and 
besieged  him  at  the  Outlook  office.  Mills  was  always 
chosen  by  his  associates,  themselves  crack  reporters,  to  do 
the  questioning  when  the  Colonel  was  to  be  quizzed.  They 
knew  the  Colonel  liked  him  and  they  knew  that  Mills  could 
not  be  rattled  or  browbeaten. 


156  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

When  it  came  to  turning  the  results  of  his  interviews 
or  other  reportorial  activities  into  ' '  copy  "  Mills  showed  no 
tenderness  for  the  Colonel's  feelings.  He  had  a  mordant 
satiric  power,  a  strong  sense  of  humor,  and  free  rein  so  far 
as  his  paper  was  concerned.  His  stories  must  often  have 
been  sour  reading  for  the  victims  of  his  pen.  Often  these 
found  themselves  made  delightfully  ridiculous;  yet  the 
touch  was  so  light,  the  spirit  so  free  from  any  trace  of 
ill-nature,  that  they  seldom  grew  angry.  By  way  of 
sample  of  his  reportorial  style,  his  account  of  the  famous 
upheaval  in  the  Outlook  office,  printed  in  The  Evening  Sun 
of  Thursday,  June  19,  191 3,  compels  reproduction  here : 

GLIMPSE  AT  T.   R.   PAY  ENVELOPE. 

Colonel's  Gesture  Forbade  Mr.  Abbot  to  Open  it. 

HOT  FIRE  OF  NOT-A-WORD 

But  There's  No  Scrap  in  the  Outlook  Office,  Really. 

Only  a  motion  picture  operator  with  plenty  of  film,  good 
elastic  film  capable  of  withstanding  all  sorts  of  strain,  could 
give  an  adequate  idea  of  the  energetic  denial  made  at  the 
Outlook  office  today  of  the  reported  disagreement  in  that 
paper's  official  family  which  was  alleged  to  have  resulted  in  the 
withdrawal  of  W.  B.  Howland,  for  twenty-three  years  the 
publisher,  and  his  two  sons,  Karl  V.  S.  and  Harold  J.  Howland, 
from  the  firm.  It  was  rumored  that  the  fuss  was  about  a 
strike  on  the  part  of  the  Colonel  for  a  raise  in  salary,  his 
salary  at  the  time  being  placed  by  rumor  at  $50,000,  and  that 
the  Howlands  got  out  rather  than  pay  the  raise. 

The  movies  operator  with  his  machine  trained  on  the  corri- 
dor of  the  Outlook  offices  at  287  Fourth  Avenue  shortly  after 
II  o'clock  would  have  caught  the  figure  of  Harold  J.  Howland 
turning  the  corner  rapidly  from  the  direction  of  the  Contri- 
buting Editor's  office.     Mr.  Howland  did  not  appear  to  be 


Look-in  on  the  "Outlook"  i57 

highly  elated  at  the  opportunity  to  say  something  regarding 
the  change  in  the  firm. 

"My  father  and  brother  have  said  all  that  is  to  be  said  on  the 
subject,"  said  Mr.  Rowland. 

Diligent  endeavor  has  failed  thus  far  to  get  any  expression 
at  all  from  either  Mr.  Rowland's  father  or  brother. 

"Are  you  still  as  loyal  a  Progressive  as  ever?" 

"You  bet  I  am,  even  if  I'm  not  a  candidate  for  office" — re- 
ferring to  his  candidacy  for  Congress  in  New  Jersey  last  fall. 

Just  at  this  minute  Col.  Roosevelt  looms  into  view,  flanked 
by  his  secretary  and  going  strong.  Business  of  hasty  pressing 
of  elevator  button  by  Mr.  Rowland.  Elevator  stops  and  he 
jimips  in. 

"Col.  Roosevelt,  District  Attorney  Whitman  visited  you  at 
Oyster  Bay  yesterday" 

' '  Not-a-word !    Not-a-word !     Not-a-word ! ' ' 

No  "talky"  apparatus  speedy  enough  to  take  that  gatling 
gun  negation  of  the  Colonel's  could  ever  be  geared  up  to  a 
moving  picture  machine. 

"About  the  Rowlands  leaving  the  Outlook,  then?" 

' '  Not-a-word !     Not-a-word !     Not-a-word ! ' ' 

Right  here  Lawrence  Abbot,  president  of  the  Outlook  com- 
pany, breaks  into  the  picture.  Business  of  earnest  conversa- 
tion between  the  Colonel  and  Mr.  Abbot.     Mr.  Abbot : 

"No,  Col.  Roosevelt  does  not  desire  to  say  a  word,  but  I 
do  not  object  to  stating  that  there  is  no  basis  whatever  for  the 
story  of  contention  in  this  office.  Mr.  Rowland  wished  to 
make  his  change  simply  to  carry  out  some  ideas  of  his  own  in 
the  publishing  field.  As  for  Col.  Roosevelt's  salary,  his 
salary  is" 

Business  of  Mr.  Abbot  looking  inquiringly  at  Col.  Roosevelt, 
the  while  the  Colonel  gesticulates  vehemently. 

"Is" 

More  vehement  gesticulation. 

"Is  not  anything  like  the  sum  mentioned  in  the  stories. 
The  stories  are  grossly  exaggerated.  Col.  Roosevelt's  salary 
is" 

More  vehement  gesticulation  from  the  Colonel. 


15^  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 


"Is" 

Still  more  vehement  gesticulation. 

"Is  not  half  the  figure  mentioned." 

Anyway,  the  public  almost  found  out  what  Col.  Roosevelt 
is  getting.  And  the  strain  of  the  ordeal  overwhelmed  Mr. 
Abbot  so  completely  that  he  nearly  collapsed  against  the  banis- 
ters. It  was  no  use  trying  to  run  down  the  other  rumor,  which 
is  to  the  effect  that  the  Rowlands  are  going  to  wean  the 
Colonel  away  to  the  Independent  as  soon  as  they  get  estab- 
lished there.     The  Colonel,  to  Mr.  Abbot,  grabbing  his  arm: 

"Oh,  you  were  wanting  to  confer  with  me!" 

Exeunt  omnes. 

Colonel  Roosevelt  actually  formed  a  very  high  regard 
for  his  interrogator-general.  One  day  he  walked  into  the 
Reporters'  Room  at  the  City  Hall  and  asked  for  ' '  my  little 
friend  Mills. ' '  They  had  a  long  and  friendly  chat  together. 
In  order  to  complete  this  episode,  although  once  more 
the  chronological  sequence  is  broken,  the  Colonel's  last 
word,  written  when  he  heard  that  Mills  had  gone  to  France, 
may  best  be  given  here : 

METROPOLITAN 

432  Fourth  Avenue,  New  York 
Office  of 
Theodore  Roosevelt  December  27,  1917. 

My  dear  Lieutenant  Mills  : 

Three  cheers  for  you !     I  am  as  pleased  as  Punch. 
With  all  good  wishes, 

Faithfully  yours, 

Theodore  Roosevelt. 
Lt.  Quincy  S.  Mills, 
Co.  G.  1 68th  Inf., 

American  Expeditionary  Forces, 
France. 

Mills  was  sent  to  both  of  the  regular  party  conventions 
ini9i2,  the  Republican  at  Chicago  from  June  18  to  June 


National  Conventions  159 

22  and  the  Democratic  at  Baltimore  from  June  24  to 
July  2.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  remind  readers  that 
both  were  occasions  of  turgid  struggle  and  perfervid  excite- 
ment. Mills's  assignment  to  them  shows  that  he  had 
climbed  very  close  to  the  top  as  a  political  reporter.  His 
diary  for  the  early  months  of  this  year  is  a  condensed 
record  of  the  notable  sayings  and  doings  of  the  party  lead- 
ers, as  they  appeared  in  the  newspapers  and  regardless  of 
whether  they  were  gleaned  by  himself  or  not.  Apparently 
he  compiled  them  for  ready  reference.  Among  the  entries 
is  this  one  on  a  January  page:  "On  the  nth,  Bryan 
informed  me  that  I  was  an  idiot. ' '  There  is  no  explanation, 
but  The  Evening  Sun  was  not  very  friendly  to  Mr.  Bryan 
and  Mr.  Bryan  had  not  the  temper  or  quality  of  Colonel 
Roosevelt. 

When  it  comes  to  the  pages  covering  the  convention 
dates,  they  are  all  blank.  He  wrote  a  long  letter  home 
from  the  Twentieth  Century  Limited  on  his  way  to 
Chicago,  complaining  that  although  there  were  ten  packed 
cars  there  were  neither  girls  nor  politicians  on  board. 
But  after  that  he  only  sent  postal  cards  from  both  con- 
vention cities.  He  was  not  too  busy,  however,  to  collect 
material  for  this  which  he  sent  on  a  picture  card  to  a 
young  lady,  a  family  friend : 

P.M.,  Chicago,  June  5,  1912 — I  wish  to  state  right  here  and 
now  that  the  charges  about  the  size  of  the  Chicago  girls'  feet 
are  base  slanders.  Have  seen  some  of  the  daintiest  little  feet 
imaginable  and  the  dear  damsels  are  about  the  prettiest  in 
this  town  that  I  have  ever  seen.     God  bless  them.  Q. 

In  a  card  to  his  mother  he  said  he  was  busy,  but  had  "a 
chance  to  see  all  of  this  town  I  want  to  see.  I  am  ready  to 
get  back  to  civilization. ' '  Also,  he  says,  he  does  not  mind 
the  work  ' '  as  the  office  seems  satisfied. ' '  From  Baltimore : 
"Haven't  got  as  sore  on  this  town  as  on  Chicago,  although 


i6o  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

there  aren't  so  many  pretty  girls. ' '  He  found  the  city  too 
small  for  a  convention  and  conditions  were  hard  on  every- 
one. At  the  end,  he  wrote,  "I  am  just  tired  and  sleepy." 
All  this  is  frivolous,  but  his  work  in  the  paper  was  not. 
It  is  now  undistinguishable  from  that  of  his  co-workers,  but 
at  the  time  those  who  knew  praised  warmly  his  picturing 
of  the  great  combat  in  which  Bryan,  Wilson  and  Champ 
Clark  strove,  and  Wilson  won.  As  souvenirs.  Mills  kept 
tally  sheets  of  both  conventions,  tickets  of  admission  and  a 
copy  of  his  expense  bill  which  shows  that  his  double- 
barrelled  trip  cost  the  office  $256  besides  his  salary  and 
the  telegraph  tolls.  Throughout  the  campaign  that 
followed,  he  was  in  the  thick  of  the  fight.  Especially 
he  kept  watch  for  the  volcanic  sayings  and  catapultic 
doings  of  the  Colonel  whenever  he  was  in  or  about  New 
York. 

All  through  the  early  part  of  191 3,  this  was  the  most 
interesting  feature  of  Mills's  work,  keeping  in  touch  with 
the  Colonel.  He  bought  a  little  diary  that  year,  as  was  his 
habit,  but  he  used  it  only  as  an  address  book.  Its  early 
pages  are  filled  with  the  names  of  people  who  could  give 
information  on  political  and  other  public  matters,  with 
their  telephone  numbers  and  other  data  for  getting  quickly 
into  touch  with  them.  The  array  included  all  the  promi- 
nent men  in  and  about  New  York.  There  are  no  records 
whatever  of  things  done  or  said.  Indeed,  apart  from  the 
Roosevelt  doings,  there  was  little  of  special  interest  until 
August,  when  Governor  Sulzer  lucklessly  convened  that 
extraordinary  session  of  the  Legislature  which  took  the  bit 
in  its  teeth  and  impeached  him  and  convicted  him  and 
removed  him  from  office. 

Mills  was  sent  to  Albany  as  special  correspondent  to 
report  all  these  proceedings  and  the  columns  of  The  Even- 
ing Sun  were  full  of  his  work  under  the  biggest  headlines. 
The  story  is  too  well  known  to  need  telling  here.     The 


Vacation  News  Beat  i6i 

trial  was  no  sooner  over  than  the  mayoralty  campaign  was 
on.  John  Purroy  Mitchel,  then  Collector  of  the  Port,  was 
nominated  by  the  Fusion  reform  elements  over  the  heads 
of  Messrs.  McAneny  and  Whitman.  Tammany  drafted 
Judge  McCall  from  the  Supreme  Court.  A  spectacular 
fight,  which  seemed  to  be  close,  ensued.  Mills  had  known 
Mitchel  as  President  of  the  Board  of  Aldermen  during 
Judge  Gaynor's  term  and  earHer  as  Commissioner  of 
Accounts.  There  was  already  friendship  and  mutual 
regard  between  the  two.  He  was  able  to  throw  himself 
into  the  struggle  enthusiastically  and  he  did.  The  tug- 
of-war  seemed  to  be  desperate ;  but  there  never  was  any 
real  doubt  as  to  the  result.  After  one  of  the  most  exciting 
municipal  campaigns  on  record,  Mitchel  was  elected 
Mayor,  carrying  every  one  of  the  five  boroughs,  and  the 
city  by  more  than  a  hundred  thousand  majority. 

The  work  of  the  campaign  was  exhausting.  When  it 
was  all  over,  Mills  went  on  a  trip  to  New  Orleans  for  rest. 
He  sailed  on  November  24,  and  the  trip  became  the 
occasion  of  one  of  his  best  news  beats.  On  October  15, 
six  weeks  or  so  before,  Park  Commissioner  Charles  B. 
Stover  stepped  out  of  his  office  in  the  Arsenal  in  Central 
Park  for  luncheon.  From  that  moment  he  dropped  out 
of  sight  utterly.  He  had  not  said  a  word  to  anyone  as 
to  his  going ;  he  sent  no  communication  to  friend  or  col- 
league. He  just  disappeared.  Investigation  disclosed 
no  cause  for  his  action.  The  story  of  his  vanishing  and 
his  portrait  were  thrown  on  the  screen  in  every  motion 
picture  house  in  the  country.  The  case  remained  a  com- 
plete mystery. 

But  Mills,  strolling  about  the  levees  in  New  Orleans, 
saw  a  figure  that  he  knew  well.  Walking  up,  he  stuck  out 
his  hand  with  "How  d'ye  do.  Commissioner."  It  was 
Stover.  For  a  moment,  he  tried  to  fence  but  he  knew  he 
was  caught,  so  he  just  explained  that  he  was  tired  and 


162  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

wanted  a  rest ;  why  should  he  not  take  one  if  he  desired  ? 
He  was  surprised  at  all  the  fuss  over  nothing. 

Mills  telegraphed  his  discovery  at  once  and  The  Evening 
Sun  featured  it  that  day,  December  i,  191 3,  in  its  late 
editions.  Next  day,  a  long  and  detailed  story  and  inter- 
view completed  the  sensation .  The  late  George  M .  Smith , 
who  was  then  the  Managing  Editor,  wired  to  Mills: 
"Mr.  Reick  asks  me  to  send  his  congratulations  on  Stover 
stories.  Please  accept  mine  also. ' '  Mr.  William  C.  Reick 
was  at  that  time  proprietor  of  the  paper. 

Mills  enjoyed  the  old  French  city  and  its  quaint  life.  A 
batch  of  picture  postcards  that  he  sent  home  tell  briefly  of 
his  exploration  in  the  Creole  quarters  and  in  the  famous 
eating  houses.  He  liked  the  experience  so  well  that  he 
repeated  it  when  he  took  his  vacation  in  1914,  again  to- 
ward the  end  of  the  year.  This  time,  the  steamer  that  he 
went  on  passed  through  a  cyclone  and  a  young  Brooklyn- 
ite,  a  passenger,  was  washed  from  the  deck  and  lost. 
Knowing  that  the  news  was  sent  by  wireless  to  New  York 
and  fearing  his  parents  would  be  alarmed  he  sent  them  a 
message  by  the  same  means:  "O.  K.  Not  even  sea- 
syking."  From  New  Orleans  he  gave  the  paper  a  graphic 
account  of  the  storm  and  the  tragedy. 

He  returned  from  the  earlier  trip,  the  1913  one,  just 
in  time  for  Mayor  Mitchel's  inauguration.  He  then  had 
to  deal  with  a  complete  new  element  at  the  City  Hall. 
Democracy  was  out  and  reform  and  non-partisanship  were 
in.  Mills  had  no  difficulty  in  winning  general  confidence. 
With  Comptroller  Prendergast  he  had  occasional  collisions 
over  details  of  financial  administration,  notably  over  de- 
lays in  paying  the  public  school  teachers,  whose  cause  he 
always  espoused ;  but  these  always  ended  in  gruff  reconcil- 
iations. The  two  men  respected  each  other.  With  Mayor 
Mitchel,  relations  of  mutual  esteem  and  friendship  were 
soon   established.     Interesting   light    upon    this   period 


City  Hall  Appreciation  163 

and  on  the  intercourse  between  the  Mayor  and  Mills  is 
shed  by  a  memoir  prepared  for  use  in  this  book  by  Mr. 
Samuel  L.  Martin,  who  was  Executive  Secretary  to  the 
Mayor  and  one  of  his  closest  and  most  trusted  advisers. 
Mr.  Martin  writes : 

I  have  learned  from  the  boys  of  The  Sun  office  of  the  plan  to 
publish  a  volume  in  memory  of  "Q" — as  he  was  known  to  me 
— and  I  feel  that  I  must  add  my  mite  of  appreciation,  however 
inadequate,  not  only  on  my  own  behalf  but  on  behalf  of  those 
of  the  Mayor's  office  in  191 6  and  191 7  when  he  was  one  of  us 
at  the  City  Hall.  He  was  one  of  the  late  Mayor  Mitchel's 
closest  friends  and  he  was  consulted  upon  numerous  occasions 
about  matters  of  policy  affecting  the  conduct  of  the  city  govern- 
ment. We  came  to  know  him  as  a  man  of  sober  thought,  ever 
ready  to  lend  a  helping  hand. 

Perhaps  the  thing  that  brought  these  two  men  closer  to- 
gether than  anything  else  was  the  question  of  preparedness 
which  in  the  exciting  days  of  1 91 6- 17  was  an  overshadowing 
one.  Both  men  were  of  one  mind  on  that  question.  Both 
went  to  Plattsburg  and  both  qualified  as  officers.  How  well  I 
recall  Mills's  pride  in  his  uniform  when  he  came  to  the  Mayor's 
office  immediately  upon  his  return,  and  his  impatience  with 
the  delays  that  kept  him  here  when  he  thought  he  ought  to 
have  been  on  the  other  side.  And,  finally,  when  he  was  about 
to  go,  how  the  entire  business  of  the  Mayor's  office  was  dis- 
rupted while  the  Mayor  personally  undertook  the  job  of 
getting  him  a  particular  type  of  automatic  pistol,  which  Mills 
had  set  his  heart  upon.  That  gun  went  with  him  to  France 
and  I  have  no  doubt  it  was  with  him  when  he  died. 

I  had  several  letters  from  him  after  he  left.  One  of  these  I 
received  late  in  June,  1918.  Dated  "Somewhere  in  hip  boots," 
it  enclosed  his  photograph — in  his  gas  mask !  Although  he  had 
been  in  the  thick  of  the  fight,  and  was  then  at  one  of  the  train- 
ing stations  preparing  for  the  promotion  that  he  would  have 
received  had  he  lived,  and  was  enjoying  what  he  termed  a 
"rest,"  he  was  still  vexed  because  he  thought  that  everything 
that  ought  to  have  been  done  on  this  side  was  not  being  done. 


i64  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

He  said,  "the  war  can  only  end  one  way,"  but  added  that  "it 
ought  by  this  time  to  be  gradually  filtering  through  the  ivory 
domes  of  Congress  and  the  people  back  home  that  it  is  going 
to  take  time  and  men  to  end  it  right."  His  prediction  in  the 
same  letter  that ' '  the  German  power  will  waste  itself  this  sum- 
mer" proved  true;  for  the  men  he  thought  we  should  have 
had  there  at  that  time  were  on  the  way. 

Quincy  Mills  died  as  he  had  lived — fighting  for  a  principle. 
Always  strong  in  his  likes  and  dislikes,  sometimes  too  radical 
in  his  intolerance  of  indifference  and  inefficiency,  he  was  con- 
stantly active  in  his  endeavor  to  achieve  the  thing  which  he 
believed  to  be  right.  He  never  dodged  the  issue.  He  met  it 
squarely,  face  to  face,  and  fought  it  with  the  bulldog  determina- 
tion which  his  friends  knew  to  be  one  of  his  best  qualities.  His 
was  the  supreme  sacrifice.  The  consolation  to  his  family — if 
there  can  be  any  consolation  for  a  father  and  a  mother  under 
such  circumstances — is  the  satisfaction  that  he  was  their  boy ; 
that  his  principles  were  their  principles  and  that  when  the  time 
came  for  him  to  go,  he  went  in  just  the  way  his  principles 
exacted.  That  satisfaction  will  ever  be  theirs.  The  rest  of  us 
are  proud  to  remember  him  as  our  friend — and  we  ought  to 
be  the  better  because  of  it. 

There  is  always  a  good  deal  of  luck  as  well  as  vigilance 
in  reportorial  success.  In  a  letter  to  his  mother,  who  was 
on  a  visit  to  Statesville  at  the  time,  Mills  tells  of  a  notable 
instance.     Under  date  of  April  i8,  1914,  he  writes : 

You  will  have  read  fully  the  accounts  of  the  attempt  on  the 
Mayor's  life  by  the  time  you  receive  this.  It  was  a  close 
squeak.  You  may  remember  my  mentioning  that  I  had 
warned  Mitchel  someone  would  take  a  pot  shot  at  him  and  he 
had  better  get  himself  well  guarded  by  plain  clothes  men. 
When  he  walked  into  the  City  Hall  yesterday  after  the  shoot- 
ing, I  said,  "I  told  you  so."     He  grinned. 

Thanks  to  the  able  and  alert  reporter  whom  The  Evening 
Sun  has  assigned  to  City  Hall,  that  well  known  paper  was  the 
first  to  get  on  the  street  with  the  news  of  the  attack.    But  if 


Last  Work  at  Albany  165 

the  incident  had  occurred  five  minutes  later  I  would  have  been 
drinking  a  malted  milk  over  the  bar  of  Mr.  Hegeman's  drug- 
store and  The  Evening  Sun  would  have  been  among  the  last 
papers  on  the  street  and  would  have  had  very  little  to  say  of  its 
prowess. 

And  so  it  goes — as  Horace  says.  I've  been  pretty  lucky, 
taking  my  newspaper  experience  by  and  large;  I  really  do  feel 
pretty  proud  of  this  story. 

Before  this  outline  of  Mills's  career  as  a  newspaper 
reporter  is  closed,  another  leap  ahead  must  be  made  to 
chronicle  his  last  work  in  that  capacity.  After  he  became 
an  editorial  writer,  he  was  occasionally  drafted  for  special 
political  correspondence  from  Albany.  This  was  the  case 
in  April,  191 7,  just  a  month  before  he  went  to  the  Officers' 
Training  Camp  at  Plattsburg  as  a  volunteer  for  the  war. 
He  was  sent  to  the  State  Capital  to  report  the  farcical 
proceedings  taken  to  punish  Mayor  Mitchel  for  contempt 
of  the  Senate  in  applying  the  term,  Prussianism,  to  the 
conduct  of  one  of  its  members.  On  the  third  morning, 
April  5,  he  summed  up  the  outcome  in  this  cutting 
sentence : 

After  spending  two  days  in  the  uncomfortable  position  of 
the  hunter  who  yelled  for  "somebody  to  come  and  help  me 
loose  this  bear  I've  caught,"  the  Senate  let  go  of  the  trial  of 
Mayor  Mitchel  a  few  minutes  after  two  o'clock  this  morning. 

The  Senate  whitewashed  the  Senator  and  the  Mayor 
impartially. 

During  the  years  of  active  and  varied  newspaper 
experience  and  progress  from  1907  to  191 5,  Mills's  private 
life  flowed  on  with  only  trifling  divergence  from  the  con- 
templations and  enjoyments,  already  described,  upon 
which  he  launched  as  soon  as  he  was  settled  in  New  York. 
The  family  relations  were  close  knit.     Mills  spent  much 


1 66  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

time  at  home,  reading  and  studying.  His  mother 
and  he  went  to  church  together  on  high  festivals, 
generally  choosing  a  fine  musical  service.  They  had  many 
friends  from  the  South,  domiciled  in  New  York  or  passing 
through ;  they  made  many  new  friends.  There  was  always 
movement  enough  in  the  life  to  make  it  interesting. 
Quincy  cast  his  eyes  on  many  feminine  forms.  Some 
verses  which  embody  the  same  idea  as  a  couple  of  famous 
stanzas  in  Beppo,  though  written  somewhat  earlier,  are 
still  suggestive  of  his  attitude  toward  "the  sex" : 

The  Face  in  the  Crowd. 

As  when  two  bits  of  wreckage  meet 

Upon  a  foaming  sea, 
And  touch  and  part,  to  meet  no  more, 

So  was  it  I  met  thee. 
Yet  always  still  your  fair  sweet  face 

Ever  comes  back  to  me. 

Only  a  glimpse  in  the  crowded  street, 

Each  read  each,  eye  to  eye, 
And  saw,  and  knew — with  the  joy  of  it 

We  felt  our  hearts  beat  high ; 
We  were  each  other's  that  instant's  space — 

Then  the  crowd  swept  us  by. 

We  met  and  parted,  but  your  face 

Lives  in  my  memory  still, 
And  though  another  share  my  life, 

As  it  may  be  another  will. 
Sacred  to  thee  within  my  heart 

One  spot  she  may  not  fill. 

One  of  his  encounters  with  an  old  acquaintance  threat- 
ened to  be  serious,  but  a  vacation  trip  southward  put  an 
end  to  the  romance,  as  an  entry  in  one  of  those  very  casual 
diaries  indicates.     He  was  disenchanted.     The  diaries  say 


Hints  in  Diaries  167 

nothing,  however,  of  an  attractive  young  widow,  whom  he 
met  on  his  New  Orleans  holiday  in  191 3.  For  two  years 
before  this,  his  inclinations  had  been  strong  toward  a 
young  lady  of  Virginia,  upon  whom  his  mother  had  set  her 
hopes.  The  new  acquaintance  diverted  him  from  this  suit, 
yet  never  came  to  anything  itself  as  he  decided  that 
difference  of  disposition  might  render  a  marriage  unhappy 
for  both. 

In  general,  the  diaries,  when  kept  at  all,  record  only 
lighter  interests  and  doings.  Operas,  plays,  concerts, 
visits  to  art  displays,  are  jotted  down  with  condensed  but 
often  pungent  criticism  as  in  his  letters.  His  standards 
developed;  his  taste  matured,  but  he  never  could  tolerate 
fat  prima  donnas,  however  well  they  sang.  Naturally,  he 
was  prominent  in  the  City  Hall  Reporters'  Association, 
but  he  was  never  an  officer,  though  often  urged  to  accept  a 
nomination.  He  worked  hard  for  the  organization,  as  is 
shown  by  the  appearance  of  his  name  on  letterheads  as 
member  of  the  Room  Committee.  But  in  this  instance 
as  in  respect  of  College  offices,  he  cared  nothing  for  mere 
honors.  Naturally  he  went  to  all  the  witty  dinners  for 
which  the  Association  has  become  famous,  and  contrib- 
uted much  to  the  humorous  skits  which  set  the  tables — 
and  the  town — in  a  roar.  He  went ' '  on  the  water  wagon ' ' 
in  January,  1910,  and  on  July  i  he  writes  that  he  "found  it 
very  safe  and  satisfactory  riding."  However,  he  was 
sensible  and  moderate  in  this  as  in  other  things.  He  made 
an  exception  of  the  Association  dinners  and  other  gala 
occasions.  Later,  he  removed  the  ban  generally  in  favor 
of  light  wines  and  beer.  He  used  these  and  enjoyed  them 
with  true  temperance.  More  than  once,  also,  he  gave  up 
smoking  for  longer  or  shorter  periods,  just  as  an  assertion 
of  will  power  and  mastery  over  himself.  Country  walk- 
ing remained  a  favorite  recreation  and  the  diaries  record 
more  than  one  exploration  of  the  Orange  Mountains  in 


i68  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

company  with  Mr.  Philip  Coan,  with  whom  a  Httle  later 
he  became  immediately  associated  in  his  work  on  The 
Evening  Sun. 

He  had  few  or  no  enemies,  many  friends,  a  host  of 
cordial  acquaintances,  absorbing  interests,  high  hopes, 
fine  prospects.  All  in  all,  he  lived  a  life  as  agreeable  in 
the  present  and  as  promising  for  the  future  as  any  young 
man,  just  turned  thirty  and  fighting  his  way  in  the  world, 
could  wish  for. 


CHAPTER  VI 

Fighting  on  the  Editorial  Front  Line — A  Young  Apostle  of  Pre- 
paredness— Raps  at  Roosevelt — Clear  Prevision  of  America's 
Entry  into  the  War. 

Very  early  in  his  newspaper  career,  Mills  began  to 
show  ability  in  the  line  of  editorial  comment.  He  tried  his 
hand  as  early  as  19  lo,  sending  in  volunteer  articles  to  the 
Editor.  He  records  his  first  success  in  the  diary  for 
that  year  under  date  of  October  27:  "It  was  this  day, 
Thursday,  that  I  got  my  first  editorial  in.  The  Great  Vibra- 
tor, with  T.  R.  and  his  relations  to  astrology  as  its  theme." 
Plainly  he  had  formed  a  purpose  to  land  on  the  editorial 
page  and  he  pursued  it  quietly  but  systematically  until  he 
won  his  fight.  Slightly  shortened,  this  was  his  opening 
gun  on  the  editorial  front : 

The  Great  Vibrator 

Who  can  say  that  the  art  of  the  astrologer  is  false  or  that  the 
signs  of  the  zodiac  have,  indeed,  no  influence  on  the  lives  of 
men?  Let  the  doubter  read  this  excerpt  from  a  recent  exposi- 
tion of  the  doctrine  of  the  stars. 

"Persons  born  during  the  latter  half  of  October  .  .  .  draw 
unto  themselves  the  vibratory  influence  of  Scorpio.  They 
are  constantly  conceiving  new  ideas  and  promulgating  new 
schemes,  visionary  and  otherwise.  The  very  element  of  new- 
ness and  uncertainty  in  an  enterprise  is  sufficient  attraction 
to  them." 

Could  it  then  have  been  chance  that  this,  the  natal  day  of 
the  Great  Vibrator  himself,  fell  so  pat  within  the  proper  sign? 

169 


170  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

And  the  "element  of  newness  and  uncertainty" — the  very  lure 
of  the  new  nationalism  illumined  by  the  spheres.  And  here 
is  more,  proving  assuredly  that  the  Colonel's  proper  locus  is 
within  the  "vibratory  "  sign.  Of  persons  first  seeing  the  light 
in  the  unsettled  term  of  Scorpio,  we  learn: 

"They  have  very  decided  convictions  of  life  and  how  most 
of  its  affairs  should  be  conducted" — from  the  raising  of  babies 
to  the  conservation  of  natural  resources.  "Roused  to  contro- 
versy, they  display  a  most  provoking  tenacity  .  .  .  arguing 
faults  into  virtues  or  virtues  into  faults  with  equal  unconcern" 
— as  the  vibrating  happens  to  be  done  in  the  insurgent  West 
or  the  standpat  East.  "They  possess  an  overweening  desire 
for  change  and  conquest  .  .  .  fret  under  restraint  and  harbor 
an  inborn  aversion  to  law  and  conventionality."  It  is  a  long 
time  before  the  Scorpio  consciousness  reaches  that  point  where 
the  legal  right  is  the  moral  right — as  is  clearly  indicated  by  the 
shelving  of  the  "fossilized"  Supreme  Courts  for  a  vibratory 
"stewardship  of  the  public  weal." 

The  oracle  is  fulfilled.  Astrology  is  vindicated.  It  is  as  if 
the  generations  of  magic,  Chaldasans  and  Egyptians,  had  read 
their  astrolabes  only  in  foreshadowing  The  Great  Vibration  of 
the  Twentieth  Century.  Was  it  still  fortuitously  that  they 
coupled  with  "the  violent  sign  of  Scorpio"  the  sinister  influ- 
ence of  the  fiery  planet  Mars? 

"Tragedy" — "hopes  of  false  glory" — terms  ominously 
portentous  of  the  events  of  Tuesday,  November  8,  that  are 
now  casting  their  shadows  before  although,  of  course,  The 
Great  Vibrator  never  drifted  in  any  tangent  he  ever  got 
started  on.  Nothing  less  than  comet  speed  for  him.  How- 
ever great  the  wreck,  there  may  be  balm  remaining,  though, 
for  we  read  regarding  the  vibrations  of  the  Scorpio  proteges : 

"Whatever  occasion  for  regret  may  be  found  at  the  summing 
up,  it  is  seldom  th  i  reproach  of  having  played  too  tame  or  too 
uninteresting  a  game." 

Assuredly  no  such  reproach  in  this  case.  Beautiful  thought 
that ;  even  after  the  worst  he  may  vibrate  ecstatically  with  the 
consolation  that  he  at  least  "licked  'em  to  a  frazzle"  at 
Saratoga  and  shouted  himself  hoarse  throughout  the  campaign. 


Sulzer  and  T.  R.  171 

And  it  will  be  mighty  handy  to  have  the  stars  to  blame  for 
the  election  returns. 

This  was  bold  hitting  for  a  beginner,  but  that  was  Mills's 
way.  Whatever  he  did,  he  did  with  all  his  vigor.  As  for 
the  matter  and  view,  it  must  be  remembered  that  this  was 
long  before  Colonel  Roosevelt  came  to  the  front  as  the 
national  champion  in  the  war.  Mills's  personal  attitude, 
made  up  about  equally  of  admiration  and  distaste,  has 
already  been  defined.  Many  shared  it  in  19 lo  and  it  is  to 
be  remembered  that  The  Evening  Sun  was  politically 
opposed  to  the  Colonel  at  that  time  and  Mills's  writing 
perforce  took  the  color  of  the  paper  that  was  to  print  it. 
For  several  years  he  took  great  glee  in  lampooning  the 
great  man.  But  in  all  he  wrote  there  was  a  strain  of  good 
humor,  as  in  the  above,  which  must  have  amused  the  vic- 
tim far  more  than  it  offended  him.  One  bit  of  satire 
which  appeared  three  years  later,  in  the  thick  of  the 
191 3  smoke  and  fury,  seems  to  reach  the  very  perfection 
of  the  short  editorial  in  the  lighter  vein.  It  must  have 
sent  a  wave  of  laughter  up  and  down  New  York : 

PiTHEKOPHAGI 

It  will  be  recalled  that  when  the  Hon.  William  Sulzer  made 
his  celebrated  eruption  into  the  Progressive  party  last  year 
the  Hon.  George  W.  Perkins  said  with  unexpected  appro- 
priateness : 

"The  Progressive  party  is  no  longer  a  one-man  party!" 

It  seems  now  that  the  ex-Governor  of  this  State — by  removal 
— still  retains  a  hold  upon  the  hearts  and  the  imagination  of  Pro- 
gressives, which  awakens  the  suspicion  that  if  the  Colonel  does 
not  run  the  Progressive  nomination  will  go  to  "the  same  old 
Bill." 

Happy  shoiild  be  the  party  that  has  two  such  commanding 
figures  as  the  Colonel  and  "Plain  Bill,"  and  yet  it  doesn't 
seem  happy.     The  land  of  hope  is  wholly  surrounded  by  the 


172  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

River  of  Doubt.     Even  the  Colonel,  who  ate  monkeys  in  South 
America,  seems  to  hesitate  about  swallowing  Sulzer. 

After  his  first  success.  Mills  never  lost  his  hold  on  the 
editorial  page.  He  wrote  steadily  for  it  and  many  of  his 
articles  were  accepted,  especially  on  such  topics  as  munici- 
pal business,  local  politics  and  happenings  of  interest  in 
city  life.  Naturally  his  successes  were  only  occasional  for 
the  first  year  or  two.  But  in  March,  1913,  Mr.  Frank  H. 
Simonds  became  Editor  of  The  Evening  Sun  and  from  that 
time  forward  Mills's  appearances  on  the  page  became 
regular.  He  grew  to  be  more  and  more  the  paper's  special- 
ist on  civic  affairs.  In  one  article,  he  pictures  the  difficul- 
ties of  the  Board  of  Estimate  over  the  question  whether 
the  "new"  Municipal  Building  should  be  "wet  or  dry." 
Algae  in  the  Croton  Reservoir  are  explained  and  the  public 
reassured.  The  Bedford  Reformatory's  needs,  the  justice 
of  giving  a  pension  to  the  widow  of  a  probationary  police- 
man who  was  killed  suppressing  a  gang  fight,  the  rush  of 
June  brides  in  which  ' '  530  throbbing  hearts  were  made  to 
beat  as  265,"  the  burning  issue  as  to  whether  city  officials 
must  walk  or  pay  carfare — these  and  an  endless  stream  of 
subjects,  equally  important  and  equally  fugitive  were 
treated  with  vigor  and  vivacity. 

The  saddest  thing  about  newspaper  work  is  its  eph- 
emeral quality.  However  able  in  conception  and  execution, 
however  sparkling  in  presentation,  however  potent  for  its 
hour  or  day,  in  the  briefest  time  the  greater  part  of  it 
becomes  flat  and  unprofitable.  This  is  particularly  true 
of  editorial  writing.  The  news  report  of  an  event,  special 
correspondence  describing  places,  narrating  large  occur- 
rences or  explaining  political,  social  or  economic  situations, 
may  have  some  permanent  interest  and  value.  It  is  at 
least  material  for  the  historian.  But  passing  opinion, 
detached  from  the  event,  is  as  meaningless  as  the  in- 


Editor  at  Thirty-one  i73 

scriptions  of  a  lost  civilization.  To  make  many  of  Mills 's 
editorials,  strong  and  effective  though  they  were,  barely 
understandable  to-day  would  require  repetition  of  dead 
news  at  greater  length  than  the  articles  themselves. 

In  the  first  days  of  February,  191 5,  Mr.  Simonds  re- 
signed the  editorship  of  The  Evening  Sun  in  order  to  become 
Associate  Editor  of  the  Tribune.  His  successor  speedily 
made  up  his  mind  that  a  specialist  on  New  York  State 
and  local  politics  was  needed  on  the  page.  Mills's  contri- 
butions had  attracted  attention  by  their  incisiveness,  their 
lucidity  and  by  the  fund  of  information  and  the  correct 
and  consistent  thinking  behind  them.  The  vacant  place 
was  offered  to  him  early  in  May. 

Mills  was  unmistakably  pleased.  Here  was  the  reali- 
zation of  one  of  his  ambitions,  and  probably  years  sooner 
than  he  had  expected  it.  He  was  just  over  thirty-one 
years  old ;  he  had  been  only  a  little  more  than  eight  years  in 
journalism;  to  reach  the  position  of  editorial  writer  thus 
early  was  a  clear  distinction.  He  was  eager  to  accept. 
Only  his  scrupulous  character  gave  him  pause.  He  said : 
' '  This  paper  is  a  conservative  paper.  You  may  not  know 
that  I  have  very  radical  ideas.  It  may  be  that  my  view  of 
many  questions  will  be  quite  at  odds  with  the  official  opin- 
ions which  control  this  page." 

The  Editor  replied :  "I  think  it  likely,  Mr.  Mills,  that 
you  are  not  nearly  so  radical  as  you  think  you  are.  Your 
writing  suggests  a  good  deal  of  sound  sense  and  ballast. 
No  doubt,  you  have  liberal  sympathies,  but  that  is  a 
different  thing.  And  you  must  remember  that  this  paper 
stands  for  neither  stagnation  nor  reaction.  If  you  hold 
your  mind  open  and  your  temper  under  control,  you 
will  probably  have  no  difficulty  in  keeping  the  right 
tone." 

' '  Well, ' '  said  Mills, ' '  if  you  are  wilhng  to  take  the  chance 
of  my  suiting,  I  shall  be  only  too  delighted.     But  I  felt  I 


174  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

must  say  what  I  have  in  order  to  avoid  any  appearance  of 
coming  in  under  false  pretences," 

On  this  basis,  the  bargain  was  struck  and  Mills  began 
work  at  once.  The  editor's  prognostication  turned  out 
correct.  Mills  had  generous  democratic  sympathies.  He 
was  always  on  the  people's  side,  the  side  of  the  country,  the 
State,  the  city  as  a  whole  as  against  any  faction  or  class. 
But  he  was  always  just  and  sane.  He  had  a  clear  reali- 
zation of  the  rights  of  property  and  the  sanctity  of  in- 
dividual opinion  and  action  so  long  as  it  was  not  directly 
opposed  to  the  general  good. 

He  had  been  preparing  himself  for  advance  in  journal- 
ism and  especially  for  editorial  writing  by  reading  and 
study.  He  bought  in  1909  Motley's  Rise  of  the  Dutch 
Republic.  He  read  it,  too,  and  had  much  discussion 
over  it  with  his  mother.  In  1909  he  bought  The  Privileged 
Classes  by  Barrett  Wendell  and  this  also  was  the  subject 
of  much  talk.  Then  he  read  Buckle's  History  of  Civili- 
zation and  Bry  ce's  American  Commonwealth.  He  bought, 
read  and  marked — he  had  the  bad  habit  of  marking  all  his 
books — the  following  works : 

History  of  American  Politics,  Alexander  Johnston. 

Political  Parties  and  Party  Problems,  J.  A.  Woodburn. 

Principles  of  Constitutional  Government,  F.  J.  Goodnow. 

The  American  of  the  Future,  Brander  Matthews. 

Contemporary  Politics  in  the  Far  East,  Stanley  Kuhl  Horn- 
beck. 

Underlying  Principles  of  Modern  Legislation,  W.  Jethro 
Brown. 

The  New  Freedom,  Woodrow  Wilson. 

American  Syndicalism,  John  Graham  Brooks. 

New  Ideals  in  Business,  Ida  Tarbell. 

He  drew,  besides,  from  the  Public  Library  many  vol- 
umes of  the  same  general  character  and,  if  he  marked 
them  less,  he  studied  them  the  more.     Such  books  as 


All  in  a  Hundred  Words  i75 

Hoffding's  Outlines  of  Psychology  and  Stout's  Manual  of 
Psychology  he  always  had  at  hand  and  frequently  dipped 
into  them.  Along  with  these  serious  works  he  constantly 
read  his  favorite  poets,  Browning,  Kipling,  the  Rubaiyat, 
Wordsworth,  Keats  and  Byron  and  to  this  habit,  no  doubt, 
much  of  the  high  quality  of  his  style  is  to  be  attributed,  his 
faculty  of  always  choosing  the  best  word  and  giving  his 
phrase  the  most  expressive  turn. 

His  influence  in  the  editorial  work  of  The  Evening  Sun 
very  soon  made  itself  felt  and  in  a  broader  way  than  was 
expected.  In  the  beginning,  however,  his  writing  was 
principally  along  the  line  of  his  specialty  or  on  topics  of 
"human  interest"  as  the  newspaper  slang  expresses  it. 
He  developed  speedily  a  special  gift  for  short,  striking 
articles,  saying  all  that  there  was  to  be  said  on  some 
important  subject  in  a  hundred  words.  Few  editorial 
writers  have  surpassed  him  in  this  gift.  For  instance, 
when  the  City  of  New  York  adopted  a  new  flag  and  it  was 
ceremoniously  displayed  for  the  first  time  on  June  24, 191 5, 
he  wrote  a  few  lines  which  were  "double  leaded"  and 
printed  at  the  head  of  the  first  column  of  the  editorial  page 
that  day : 

Welcome  to  the  city's  new  standard  floating  over  the  City 
Hall  today!  It  is  the  emblem  of  the  greatest  city  on  the 
western  continent;  soon  it  will  be  the  emblem  of  the  greatest 
city  in  the  world.  And  its  bands  of  orange,  white  and  blue  are 
the  same  as  were  raised  by  the  Dutch  when  they  founded  New 
Amsterdam  more  than  three  centuries  ago.  May  New  York 
always  be  true  to  its  colors!  And  may  they  wave  for 
many  ages  to  come  over  a  municipality  growing  not  only  in 
numbers  and  wealth  but  even  more  in  enlightenment  and 
civic  virtue! 

How  different  he  could  be  when  he  turned  his  spirit  in 


176  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

another  direction !    Here  is  a  bit  of  prose  poesy  from  the 
paper  of  September  30,  191 5: 

Our  Rural  Flower  Show 

Those  who  have  not  communed  with  Dr.  Van  Dyke's  "God 
of  the  open  air"  in  New  York  City's  country  byways  have 
missed  the  better  part  of  Hving  in  these  fine  September  days. 
This  is  not  said  in  irony ;  it  is  the  Hteral  truth.  On  hill  and  in 
dale  the  wild  flowers  bloom  in  a  profusion  and  a  beauty  un- 
rivaled even  in  the  springtime.  The  picture  is  one  seldom 
outdone  anywhere  in  Nature's  great  conservatory  under  the 
dome  of  the  sky. 

The  variety  of  colors  is  such  as  cannot  be  reproduced  justly 
either  by  the  writer's  pencil  or  the  painter's  brush.  There 
are,  to  mention  but  a  few,  all  shades  of  purple  from  the  lilac 
of  the  New  England  aster  to  the  rich  hue  of  the  aster  itself  and 
the  royal  dye  of  the  ironweed.  There  is  the  delicate  tracery  of 
the  Queen  Anne's  lace  like  a  frilling  of  Valenciennes  against 
the  green  hedges,  and  gleaming  above  all  there  is  the  blazing 
glory  of  the  goldenrod  flourishing  sturdily  in  great  banks.  Not 
least  among  the  beauties  of  the  countryside  is  the  exquisite, 
purplish  pink  of  the  thistle's  pompons — the  humble  bull 
thistle  which  might  well  claim  favor  with  the  rose  and  orchid 
in  the  florist's  shops,  had  Luther  Burbank  devoted  himself  to 
freeing  it  of  its  needles  instead  of  wasting  his  time  on  the 
spineless  cactus. 

You  have  not  marvelled  at  the  goregous  flower  show  in  your 
goings  and  comings  about  the  city?  It  is  your  own  fault, 
then,  for  sticking  to  the  asphalt-paved  and  stone-walled  can- 
yons of  barren  Manhattan,  when  the  exhibition  lies  just  at  the 
other  end  of  the  ferry  to  Staten  Island.  Take  a  trolley  inland 
from  the  ferry  terminal  and  leave  it  where  you  like  on  reaching 
the  fields.  The  cost  is  only  30  cents  per  person  for  the  round 
trip,  which  is  worth  many  times  that  sum  to  wall-wearied 
eyes.  The  tonic  touch  of  fall  in  the  air  is  thrown  in  for 
nothing.  But  he  who  would  see  this  Nature's  wonder 
show  must  make  haste  to  go  before  Jack  Frost  enters  the 


Serio-Comic  Wrath  i77 

conservatory  and  subsitutes  colors  of  his  own  which  arc 
fine  enough  in  their  way  but  are  not  the  tints  of  this 
season. 

Evidently  Mills  had  been  on  one  of  his  suburban  outings 
and  brought  home  a  gift  from  it  for  his  readers.     But  the 
man  who  launched  the  bit  of  civic  enthusiasm  quoted 
and  did  this  charming  piece  of  word  painting  had  another 
side.     He  was  up  to  his  eyes  in  figures,  in  statistics,  in  the 
inner  workings  of  party  politics.     He  fought,  shoulder  to 
shoulder  with  Mayor  Mitchel,  against  a  State  tax  which 
bore  oppressively  on  New  York  City.     He  kept  track  of 
subway  building ;  he  placed  the  qualities  of  Commissioner 
Arthur  Wood's  police  administration  before  the  people. 
The  unification  of  the  Port  of  New  York  and  its  develop- 
ment by  better  and  bigger  piers  and  better  means  of 
circulation  from  point  to  point  for  freight  were  the  subject 
of  many  of  his  articles.     He  was  always  on  the  progressive, 
the  developmental  side.     Sometimes  he  hit  so  hard,  when 
city  officials  were  stupid  or  perversely  partisan,  that  he 
excited  great  wrath.     One  day  he  came  into  the  office 
grinning  from  ear  to  ear  because  a  very  high-up  gentleman 
had  passed  him  in  the  street  without  even  a  nod  because 
of  an  exposure  he  had  made  of  an  oppressive  move  toward 
delay  in  paying  the  teachers.     A  month  or  so  later,  his 
grin  was  still  broader  when  he  told  of  the  somewhat  sheep- 
ish fashion  in  which  the  same  gentleman,  who  had  had 
time  to  think,  came  up  to  him  in  the  City  Hall  corridor 
and  tried  to  make  believe  no  shadow  had  ever  fallen 
between  them.     He  was  a  formidable  man  and  many 
efforts  were  made  to  placate  him.     At  first  he  was  often 
invited  to  call  on  this  or  that  politician  and  have  told  him 
the  whole,  true  inside  of  things.     But  he  soon  found  that 
reciprocity  was  expected.     From  that  time  forward,  he 
contented  himself  with  the  public  record  and  his  own 
judgment.    No  one  could  make  a  cat's-paw  of  him. 


178  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

He  had,  however,  a  high  appreciation  of  real  merit  and 
was  both  generous  and  tactful  in  giving  recognition  of  it. 
A  characteristic  example  was : 

Plain  George 

There  is  no  more  modest  and  unassuming  soul  in  all  the  city 
of  New  York  than  the  Honorable  George  McAneny,  President 
of  the  Board  of  Aldermen.  Therefore  this  persistent  effort  to 
force  him  to  adopt  a  middle  initial  in  his  name  is  entirely 
unintelligible. 

There  is  no  pomposity  about  the  man  to  justify  the  associa- 
tion of  any  such  high-sounding  prefix  as  George  A.  or  George 
T.  or  George  W.  with  his  family  name.  And  yet  those  who 
write  pieces  about  his  speeches  at  banquets  or  his  sage  advis- 
ings  in  the  council  chamber  are  continually  insisting  that  he 
use  one  of  them. 

Like  "the  father  of  his  country,"  "the  father  of  the  dual 
subway  system"  is  just  plain  George.  The  most  engaging 
thing  about  him  is  that  he  is  just  plain  George,  in  spite  of  the 
fact  that  he  has  accomplished  something  that  might  have 
stiunped  his  illustrious  predecessor — namely,  he  has  made 
the  Board  of  Aldermen  respectable. 

Let  us  have  an  end  of  the  attempt  to  make  Mr.  McAneny 
put  on  airs.  He  is  too  fine  a  touch  of  simplicity  in  a  blatant 
and  self-extolling  world  to  run  the  risk  of  spoiling  him. 

Mr.  McAneny  acknowledged  this  tribute  in  a  charming 
way.  He  sent  Mills  a  large  photograph  of  himself  with 
this  inscription:  "To  the  author  of  'Plain  George' — by 
way  of  proof  of  his  point.  March,  1915."  The  article 
had  been  published  on  the  1 8th. 

But,  Mills's  attention  was  far  from  being  concentrated 
on  municipal  or  even  State  affairs.  The  South  and  its  in- 
terests were  prominent  and  he  wrote  many  articles  on  the 
cotton  crop,  the  negro  problem,  Mississippi  floods  and  the 
like.     These  while  sympathetic  were  always  written  from 


Southern  Interests  i79 

a  broad  standpoint.  He  pointed  out  the  economic  fallacy 
of  the  valorization  of  any  crop  and  urged  diversity  in 
Southern  planting.  Again  he  advocated  a  complete  system 
of  river  control.  He  treated  the  problem  as  a  national 
obligation  of  common  sense,  but  pointed  out  the  enormous 
gain  to  lands  in  the  flood  districts  and  suggested  that 
these  should  bear  a  just  proportion  of  the  expense. 

In  particular  he  took  this  ground  regarding  the  rec- 
lamation of  swamp  lands  when  Senator  Newlands,  al- 
though a  democrat,  condemned  the  proposal  to  spend 
$45,000,000  of  Federal  money  for  the  benefit  of  some 
sixteen  million  acres  in  four  states  along  the  lower  Missis- 
sippi. It  was  as  if  New  York  should  ask  the  Government 
to  assume  the  entire  expense  of  its  barge  canal.  He 
argued  for  a  national  rather  than  a  sectional  view.  He 
was  strongly  in  favor  of  the  great  improvement  but 
thought  it  should  be  financed  to  a  much  greater  extent 
than  twenty-five  per  cent  by  those  who  benefited  from  it. 
He  gave  Senator  Newlands  high  praise  for  his  courage  and 
fair  play,  for  his  revolt  against  local  favoritism. 

He  loved  trees,  individually  and  collectively,  and 
endeavored  in  a  number  of  earnest  editorials  on  forestry  to 
draw  public  attention  to  the  useless  destruction  of  timber 
going  on  all  over  America,  urging  a  governmental  system 
of  control  and  re-planting.  From  France  he  wrote,  in 
reference  to  the  sale  of  timber  owned  by  his  family  in 
North  Carolina,  that  he  never  wanted  to  see  the  land  after 
it  had  been  stripped  of  trees,  and  then  described  the 
strictness  with  which  the  French  enforced  their  wise  laws 
on  forest  preservation. 

The  cause  of  education  in  the  South  also  interested  him 
and  he  wrote  various  articles  upon  it.  In  one  published 
February  8,  191 7,  he  quoted  from  a  report  of  his  friend. 
President  E.  K.  Graham  of  the  University  of  North  Caro- 
lina to  Governor  Craig,  upon  the  great  development  of  the 


i8o  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

University's  summer  school  which  had  reached  an  enrol- 
ment of  1050  students  from  only  36  in  1907.  Incidentally 
Dr.  Graham  noted  that  the  school,  opened  in  1877,  was  the 
first  of  its  type  in  the  country.  Mills  made  the  facts  a 
plea  for  a  larger  appropriation  than  $145,000,  then  granted 
by  the  State.  President  Graham  wrote  him  a  cordial 
letter  of  thanks,  inviting  him  to  visit  Chapel  Hill.  On 
another  occasion,  discussing  a  report  by  Governor  Craig 
on  conditions  of  racial  degeneracy  in  remote  spots  in 
North  Carolina,  Mills  pointed  out  that  these  were 
paralleled  in  other  states,  as,  for  instance,  by  the  Pineys  in 
New  Jersey.  His  range  of  interests  was  America-wide. 
One  day  he  discounted  talk  about  a  rush  to  the  Arctic 
regions  after  gold.  Again,  in  Still  Unwritten,  he  had  his 
say  about  that  vague  product,  "the  great  American 
novel."  Rejecting  a  theory  that  its  failure  to  arrive  was 
due  to  the  size  and  variety  of  the  country  which  rendered 
unity  of  significance  impossible,  he  said : 

In  the  way  of  a  great  American  novel,  rather  than  any  mere 
sectional  diversity,  lies  an  overlay  of  civilized  complications 
which  cover  up  the  interesting  side  of  humanity.  Business, 
politics,  uplift  and  whatnot  are  interesting  to  those  who  pursue 
them,  but  the  novel  is  something  more  vital  than  a  political 
speech,  a  business  letter  or  a  treatise  on  welfare.  Unfor- 
tunately, when  an  American  writer  starts  to  dig  his  way  down 
to  hidden  springs  of  tears  or  laughter  he  seems  always  to  lose 
his  way  in  this  thick  overlay  of  stock  deals,  political  campaigns, 
factory  management  and  tenement  inspection.  His  shaft 
falls  in  on  him  and  of  writers  of  the  "great  American  novel" 
there  is  one  less. 

This  bit  of  thoughtful  criticism  was  not  his  only  excur- 
sion into  academic  discussion.  In  an  article  on  Names 
for  Our  Warships,  he  deplored  the  fact  that  ' '  the  line  no 
more  knows  such  names  as  those  of  the  Constitution, 
immortalized  as  Old  Ironsides — why  shouldn't  there  be  a 


Many  Sided  Views  i8i 

ship  afloat  worthy  of  such  a  title? — the  Constellation  and 
the  United  States.''  He  recalls  the  Bonhomme  Richard, 
with  its  great  commander's  reply  to  a  demand  for  sur- 
render: "I  have  not  yet  begun  to  fight,"  and  the  Kear- 
sarge.  Then,  he  had  enlightened  views  on  social  topics. 
He  had  observed  the  workings  of  the  marriage  bureau  and 
civil  marriages  while  he  was  a  reporter  at  the  City  Hall. 
He  favored  in  several  articles  amendments  to  the  State  law 
which  would  make  the  machinery  of  marriage  less  trouble- 
some and  expensive  to  couples ;  but  he  opposed  anything 
which  tended  to  make  the  ceremony  lax  or  casual.  "  It  is 
always  bad  policy  to  make  marriage  expensive  to  poor 
people,"  he  wrote,  condemning  a  three  dollar  fee  system, 
"  There  is  world-wide  experience  in  proof  of  this,  and  the 
majority  of  those  who  seek  City  Hall  marriages  belong  to 
the  poorer,  in  fact,  to  the  immigrant  class."  He  con- 
cluded by  advocating  restriction  of  power  to  marry  to  the 
City  Clerk  and  a  deputy  in  each  borough,  saying:  "The 
validity  of  the  marriage  contract  is  too  vital  a  matter  to 
entrust  its  ratification  loosely  to  a  vague  body  of  mere 
employees  of  the  city  as  distinguished  from  recognized 
officials." 

He  was  always  on  the  side  of  freedom  and  liberality. 
Censorships  of  all  sorts  were  detestable  to  him  and  he 
advocated  clean  Sunday  amusements  including  baseball, 
music  and  good  moving  pictures.  An  excellent  example 
of  his  way  of  summing  up  a  large  topic  in  a  few  lines  is 
again  shown  in  his  handling  of  the  price  question  in  one  of 
its  acute  phases.     It  appeared  on  September  22,  1916: 

"Hell  Bent!" 

The  butchers  say  prices  must  go  up  or  they  will  go  bankrupt. 
The  bakers  say  prices  must  go  up  or  they  will  go  bankrupt. 
So  with  the  candlestick  makers,  the  railroad  trainmen  with 
their  wages,  the  railroad  operators  with  their  rates  and  all  the 


i82  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

rest.  But  for  the  ultimate  consumer  nothing  ever  goes  up 
except  the  high  cost  of  living,  and  nobody  ever  seems  to  care 
whether  he  goes  bankrupt  or  not. 

This  was  what  was  called  in  office  slang  "a  bullet "  and 
it  hit  the  bulls-eye  fair  and  true.  What  more  could  be  said 
from  the  consumer's  point  of  view?  Here  was  another 
that  went  true  on  August  4  of  the  same  year : 

Still  Another  Strike  to  Think  Over 

There  is  a  lesson  for  all  concerned  in  the  threatened  street 
car  strike  in  the  fact  that  the  garment  workers'  lockout-strike 
ends  today.  After  fourteen  weeks  of  personal  suffering,  finan- 
cial loss  and  public  inconvenience  the  garment  workers  are 
starting  where  they  were  before. 

Again  on  January  23,  1917  he  fired  a  telling  shot  at  the 
class  selfishness  of  labor  unionism : 

Still  Flourishing  the  Club 

Every  little  while  the  railroad  brotherhooders  flourish  the 
club  which  they  found  so  effective  in  getting,  on  the  eve  of 
election,  the  eight-hour  law  they  thought  then  they  wanted 
but  find  now  they  didn't.  But  the  flourishes  grow  weaker. 
Now  it  is  to  be  a  series  of  strikes,  not  a  nation-wide  strike 
with  which  they  will  punish  the  country  if  the  Supreme  Court 
and  Congress  fail  to  do  their  bidding.  Fortunately,  there  is 
time  for  this  programme  also  to  be  reconsidered. 

He  did  not  spare  his  gift  of  sarcasm  on  the  politicians. 
This  is  from  the  paper  of  January  6,  191 7 : 

Quality,  not  Quantity 

The  introduction  of  seventy-one  bills  on  the  first  day  of  the 
legislative  session  does  not  encourage  the  hope  that  the  Albany 
patriots  will  exhibit  unprecedented  self-restraint  by  curbing 


America  and  the  War  183 

the  output  of  useless  laws.  This  is  a  contributory  cause  of 
the  high  cost  and  general  befuddlement  of  living  which  is 
persistently  overlooked. 

Courage  and  devotion  always  aroused  his  enthusiasm 
and  he  put  all  his  heart  into  the  glorification  of  these 
qualities.  He  found  an  opportunity  worthy  of  his  pen  on 
March  6,  1917-     He  wrote: 

Heroes,  Every  One 

Ten  bluejackets  of  the  crew  of  the  United  States  revenue 
cutter  Yamacraw  went  to  their  deaths  off  Ocean  City,  Mary- 
land, Sunday  night,  heroes,  every  one.  They  jumped  to  man 
lifeboats  when  ordered  to  make  a  desperate  effort  in  a  raging 
sea  to  rescue  the  crew  of  the  tanker  Louisiana,  stranded  on 
Little  Gull  Shoals.  Two  of  the  three  boats  sent  out  were 
swamped,  and  ten  of  the  eleven  men  at  their  oars  went  down 
in  the  smother. 

Worst  of  all,  the  sacrifice  turns  out  to  have  been  for  nothing. 
The  gale  blew  over,  and  the  Louisiana  stuck  together.  At  a 
time  when  every  seaman  the  country  can  muster  may  be 
needed  at  any  hour  the  loss  of  this  heroic  ten  is  felt  most  keenly. 
They  were  made  of  the  sort  of  stuff  that  is  required  to  assert 
and  maintain  American  rights  on  the  seas. 

As  the  months  rolled  on  and  America's  deep  concern  in 
the  war  became  more  and  more  manifest,  Mills's  mind 
dwelt  more  and  more  on  this  subject  and  he  wrote  more 
and  more  about  it  and  the  urgent  obligations  it  created. 
His  intense  Americanism  now  became  a  living  and  inspir- 
ing force.  The  conflict  was  well  into  its  second  year;  the 
Lusitania  had  been  sunk  and  many  other  desperate  out- 
rages had  been  inflicted  on  the  American  flag  and  people. 
Righteous  anger  burned  in  all  loyal  hearts;  in  none  more 
hotly  than  in  Mills's.  From  the  first  shots  fired  at  Liege 
his  indignation  and  pity  had  been  aroused  by  the  wrongs 


i84  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

and  sufferings  of  Belgium  and  France.  He  understood  the 
cold,  cruel  selfishness,  the  lust  of  conquest  and  tyranny 
that  prompted  Germany's  attack  on  the  civilized  world. 
He  was  one  of  those  idealists  who  thought  that  this 
country  should  have  taken  a  stand  for  right  the  moment 
neutrality  was  violated  and  the  faith  of  treaties  made  a 
mockery.  For  himself,  had  not  the  United  States  declared 
war,  he  would  have  gone  to  France  as  an  ambulance  driver 
in  the  spring  of  191 7-     He  had  so  resolved. 

Long  before  the  United  States  entered  the  war,  the 
neglect  of  defensive  preparation  at  Washington  had  been 
a  matter  of  deep  regret  and  serious  condemnation  on  his 
part.  He  had  expressed  these  feelings  in  articles  which, 
however,  were  couched  in  a  tone  of  moderation  in  accord 
with  the  existing  conditions  of  peace.  When  the  war 
began  and  the  atrocious  military  policy  of  Germany  began 
to  display  itself,  all  was  changed.  Moderation  ceased  to 
be  a  virtue.  He  saw  almost  at  once  that,  sooner  or  later, 
America  would  be  forced  to  take  part  in  the  struggle  for 
the  life  or  death  of  civilization.  The  sooner,  the  better, 
he  thought.  He  crusaded  for  national  preparedness  with 
all  his  brain  and  all  his  passion  of  right.  His  conviction 
not  only  blazed  constantly  in  his  writing,  but  determined 
his  own  fate  by  urging  him  into  the  glorious  career  of 
devotion  and  sacrifice. 

At  the  same  time  the  relations  of  this  country  with 
Mexico  were  a  constant  menace  of  war,  a  constant  humili- 
ation and  tribulation  to  loyal  citizens.  Mills  felt  most 
bitterly  on  this  subject.  He  felt  that  the  National 
Administration  had  failed  to  assert  the  rights  or  uphold 
the  dignity  of  the  nation.  But  what  most  offended  him 
was  the  constant  opposition  to  anything  like  military 
preparedness,  the  neglect  of  armament  and  of  some  scheme 
of  drilling  young  men,  the  foolish  and  sleazy  anti-con- 
scription talk,  when  practically  the  whole  mobile  National 


Mexican  Menace  185 

Guard  of  the  States  was  under  conscription  to  all  intents 
and  purposes,  suffering  all  the  economic  loss  of  active 
service  and  almost  all  the  hardships  of  a  campaign  in  what 
Egbert  E.  Woodbury,  the  New  York  Attorney  General, 
called  ironically  "an  imperfect  war."  Woodbury  in- 
vented a  legal  quibble  to  enable  the  soldiers  in  the  field 
to  vote  in  the  election  of  1916.  Mills  commented  on 
August  9 : 

The  Kaiser,  who  is  the  greatest  living  authority  on  war, 
thought  that  he  was  starting  a  "perfect  war,"  only  to  find  two 
years  later  that  it  belongs  very  much  in  the  "imperfect" 
class.  Is  there,  in  fact,  any  other  sort  of  war?  We  "disre- 
member,"  as  an  old  darky  friend  of  ours  used  to  say,  ever 
having  read  anything  in  the  history  books  about  a  "perfect 
war."  Now  if  Mr.  Woodbury  had  talked  of  an  "imperfect 
peace,"  he  would  have  done  better. 

His  alibi  in  support  of  guardsmen's  absentee  voting  is  cer- 
tainly imperfect  enough;  the  proper  solution  is  to  get  the  boys 
out  of  the  trenches  before  registration  day. 

As  far  back  as  April,  1914,  before  he  became  an  editorial 
writer,  he  had  his  eye  on  war  and  the  Mexican  border.  He 
wrote  to  his  mother  who  was  visiting  in  Statesville : 

My  work  for  the  past  week  has  been  very  light  because  of 
the  great  amount  of  (Mexican)  war  news.  There  is  no  space 
in  the  papers  for  anything  else.  I  do  not  like  it.  The  time 
passes  more  pleasantly  and  I  feel  less  as  if  I  were  standing  still 
mentally  when  I  am  busy.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  I  have  been 
disappointed  in  not  having  been  sent  to  Mexico.  The  Evening 
Sun  has  not  sent  anyone,  the  morning  paper  men  being  relied 
upon  for  big  stuff.  ...  I  would  certainly  like  the  chance. 
Indeed,  I  would  rather  be  sent  down  there  on  no  salary  than 
remain  here  doing  nothing  and  drawing  pay. 

Mills  was  totally  incredulous  as  to  the  value  of  the 
National  Guard  as  a  basic  organization  for  war  purposes, 


i86  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

though  he  conceded  to  it  a  certain  value  as  a  school  for 
officers  and  men.  He  made  a  study  of  the  Swiss  and  Aus- 
tralian systems  of  universal  military  training  and  in 
numerous  articles  urged  the  adoption  of  a  plan  framed  on 
the  same  principles.  The  reality  of  the  war,  when  the 
United  States  finally  entered  it,  completely  vindicated 
his  views.  The  National  Guard  organizations  were 
completely  disregarded,  though  hundreds  of  their  officers 
and  drilled  men  of  the  requisite  character  were  com- 
missioned in  the  huge  volunteer  army  which  was  created  in 
such  lamentable  haste  and  at  such  crushing  expense  of 
treasure  and  life. 

His  doctrine  regarding  the  National  Guard  or  militia 
was  very  fully  expounded  in  an  editorial  of  more  than  two 
columns,  with  which  he  celebrated,  on  February  19,  191 6, 
the  approach  of  Washington's  birthday.  It  was  headed, 
Washington  on  Preparedness,  and  it  said  that  "there 
was  no  subject  that  could  arouse  Washington  more 
thoroughly  than  the  militia  system.  He  could  be  counted 
on  to  'swear  like  an  angel  at  it. ' "  He  differed  from  those 
national  leaders  who  were  expressing  entire  confidence  in 
the  volunteer  system  in  the  hour  of  need,  because  he  had 
experience  with  it.     Mills  went  on : 

It  was  on  the  basis  of  this  experience  that  Washington  ad- 
vanced the  theory,  so  curious  to  us  who  have  been  belabored 
with  the  contrary  opinion,  that  green  volunteer  militiamen  are 
not  worth  anything  after  you  have  got  them,  as  far  as  immediate 
service  is  concerned.  Having  been  compelled  to  fight  the 
war  for  our  independence  with  such  troops,  he  gave  fervent 
testimony  to  the  fact  that  the  theory  that  the  hand-me-down 
soldier  can  drop  his  pitchfork,  pick  up  his  gun  and  step  into 
the  ranks  ready  and  able  to  chase  any  enemy  into  the  ocean 
is  most  dangerous. 

Again  and  again  Washington  protested  bitterly  during  the 
War  of  the  Revolution  against  the  futility  of  enlisting  men  for 


Militia  Ineptitude  187 

short  periods,  against  enlisting  them  from  the  separate  colonies 
instead  of  from  the  confederated  colonies  as  a  whole,  and 
against  the  system  of  favoritism  which  placed  them  under  the 
control  of  incompetent  and  inexperienced  officers  commissioned 
by  the  Assemblies  through  political  or  social  pull  instead  of 
under  officers  chosen  by  the  army  staff.  Again  and  again  he 
protested  that  such  mismanagement  produced  a  state  of  chaos 
that  rendered  his  army  unfit  for  service,  since  the  lack  of 
discipline  bred  both  disease  and  inefficiency. 

The  natural  consequence  of  such  conditions  must  be  de- 
feat, and  no  one  admits  more  frankly  than  Washington  that 
they  did  so  resiilt  in  the  Revolution.  The  Continental  forces 
were  whipped  in  engagement  after  engagement,  often  by  in- 
ferior nimibers.  A  lot  of  spread-eagle  oratory  is  still  poured 
out  by  politicians  over  the  manner  in  which  the  dauntless 
minute  men  grabbed  their  guns  in  1776,  and  beat  the  redcoats 
to  a  frazzle.     Not  so  Washington. 

The  article  goes  on  to  quote  from  Washington's  report 
in  1780,  showing  his  belief  that,  but  for  the  blundering  of 
the  British  commanders,  the  incapacity  and  unreliability 
of  the  volunteer  levies  would  have  lost  the  Revolutionary 
war  to  the  Colonies.  This  opinion  is  urged  as  specially 
opportune  for  study  when  Congress  and  the  Adminis- 
tration seemed  drifting  toward  the  same  blunder  by  trying 
* '  to  disguise  the  skeleton  in  our  military  closet  by  rigging  it 
up  in  the  verbal  gear  of  a  'Federal'  militia."  Then  the 
experiences  of  the  War  of  18 12,  of  the  Civil  War  and  the 
war  with  Spain  are  cited  to  show  that  the  faults  and  dan- 
gers are  inherent  in  the  system : 

The  regular  army  chiefs  have  been  quick  to  condemn  any 
such  programme,  but  not  because  of  any  complaint  they  have 
to  make  against  the  personnel  of  the  National  Guard  at  pres- 
ent. On  the  contrary  Major-General  Leonard  Wood  and  other 
authorities  have  said  that  the  results  obtained  by  organiza- 
tions here  and  there  in  spite  of  the  militia  system  handicap 


188  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

have  been  remarkable.  But  even  the  best  the  guardsmen 
have  accomplished  is  not  good  enough  if  they  are  to  be  relied 
on  as  a  first  line  of  defence,  as  they  must  be  now.  They  lack 
the  discipline  which  was  emphasized  by  Washington  as  essen- 
tial. It  is  not  their  fault.  Under  a  semi-social,  semi-political 
system  of  officering  they  could  not  be  expected  to  have  it. 
And  their  lack  of  training  in  field  operations  renders  them 
unfit  to  protect  themselves  against  the  soldiers'  worst  enemy, 
disease,  in  a  campaign. 

In  conclusion,  the  War  College  recommendation  of  a 
nucleus  of  a  regular,  mobile  army  of  195,500  men  was 
strongly  advocated  along  with  adoption  of  the  Chamber- 
lain plan  of  universal  military  service,  "since  the  present 
war  has  demonstrated  that  in  the  twentieth  century 
nations  go  to  war  en  masse  and  that  the  advantage,  if  not 
the  victory,  is  still  with  those  who,  as  General  Forrest  said, 
'have  the  mostest  men  and  git  thar  fustest. ' " 

This  policy  was  not  adopted  by  the  Government .  Noth- 
ing was  done  until  after  war  had  been  declared.  Every- 
one now  realizes  the  disastrousness  of  the  blunder.  It 
cost  thousands  of  lives  and  billions  of  wealth.  Mills 
himself  might  be  alive  to-day  had  his  advice  been 
taken. 

His  agitation,  in  fact,  excited  great  interest,  as  he  found 
out  later,  in  army  circles  as  well  as  among  civilians  who 
took  a  common  sense  view  of  the  situation.  All  his 
articles  on  the  war  and  American  interests  involved  in  it 
and  on  the  prospect  of  American  participancy  were 
written  in  a  tone  of  exaltation.  They  commanded  general 
attention  and  contributed  much  to  the  great  and  growing 
popularity  of  The  Evening  Sun  during  that  period.  Here 
is  a  flash  of  enthusiasm  called  forth  by  some  discussion 
toward  the  close  of  19 16  as  to  suspending  the  illumination 


Imperial  Immunity  1^9 

of  the  Statue  of  Liberty  in  the  harbor;  it  appeared  on 
December  5 : 

Liberty,  the  Shining  Mark 

Boldly  outlined  by  the  illumination  of  Liberty  stands  the 
fact  that  this  priceless  heritage  of  ours  is  not  safeguarded  to- 
day against  every  emergency.  Not  until  the  illumination 
burns  upon  American  consciousness  the  truth  that  Liberty  s 
safety  depends  upon  individual  sacrifice  and  service,  will  it 
suffice.  Short  of  this,  the  more  brilliantly  Liberty  is  illumined 
the  more  clearly  it  shines  out  as  a  target  for  Oppression. 

It  is  within  that  the  fire  of  devotion  to  Liberty  must  burn 
more  brightly— in  the  American  heart.  We  have  grown  to 
accept  Liberty  too  much  as  a  matter  of  course. 

During  his  entire  service  as  editorial  writer,  covering 
twenty-seven  months  of  the  war  period,  he  wrote  fully  two 
hundred  and  fifty  articles  on  phases  of  the  European 
conflict  and  American  progress  toward  intervention.     He 
held  firmly  the  view  of  ultimate  obligation  to  go  in  and 
urged  readiness  for  the  inevitable.     His  contempt  and 
abomination  for  the  German  autocracy  is  illustrated  in 
this  "bullet,"  fired  on  October  17,  1916: 
Blood  Will  Tell 
His  heart  bleeds  for  them,  the  Kaiser  assures  his  people. 
This  sympathy  must  be  of  great  support  to  the  Germans,  reel- 
ing in  the  red  dance  of  death.     But  is  there  another  family  of 
six  sons  except  the  Hohenzollern  family  in  all  Germany  which 
has  not  lost  one  of  them  in  battle  since  August  i,  1914? 

Yet  he  could  be  fair  and  reasonable  anent  things  Ger- 
man as  well,  for  on  November  25  of  the  same  year,  he 
wrote  this : 

Golden  Mean  Indeed 

Those  who  damn  indiscriminately  all  things  Teutonic  are  in 
error.    German  subservience  to  the  doctrine  of  the  oneness  of 


190  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

might  and  right  is  wrong.  But  the  German  genius  for  system 
is  something  which  America  may  well  emulate.  Americanism 
runs  to  individual  license  where  Kultur  constructs  the  man 
machine.  It  will  be  a  great  nation  which  finds  the  golden 
spiritual  mean. 

Nor  was  he  ever  blind  to  faults  at  home,  nor  silent  when 
they  took  the  form  of  class  interest  as  against  national 
safety : 

The  Drift 

There  is  nothing  amazing  in  the  fact  that  the  railroad  train- 
men have  decided  that  they  do  not  want  an  eight-hour  law 
after  all  if  they  have  to  take  an  anti-strike  law  with  it.  This 
attitude  is  entirely  consistent  with  the  tendency  in  this  country 
to  demand  an  invincible  national  defence  system,  but  to 
shriek  "Conscription!"  at  the  suggestion  that  every  citizen 
must  do  his  bit  to  produce  it.  Americanism  is  too  much  in- 
clined today  to  want  all  privilege  and  no  obligation. 

This  was  printed  on  December  21,  1916,  and  gave  voice 
to  the  reaction,  general  throughout  the  country  and 
manifested  even  in  Congress,  against  the  surrender  to  the 
four  railroad  brotherhoods  in  the  Adamson  act,  passed  in 
the  midst  of  the  presidential  canvass. 

His  theory  of  military  preparedness,  running  through 
scores  of  articles,  was  based  on  his  belief  that  the  country 
would  have  to  enter  the  war ;  even  if  not  this  war,  some  war 
in  the  future.  The  surest  way  to  minimize  the  danger  and 
postpone  the  necessity  was  to  have  such  an  army  and  navy 
as  would  enable  the  country  to  strike  swiftly  and  strike 
hard.  Knowledge  that  the  Government  was  thus  ready 
would  cause  Germany  in  the  present,  and  all  powers 
in  the  future,  to  refrain  from  provoking  the  United 
States.    Therefore    adequate    defensive    force   was  the 


Preparedness  191 

cheapest  policy;  millions  spent  on  it  would  save  billions 
in  actual  war.  This  view  was  prophetic;  it  is  now 
historical. 

As  a  first  element  in  preparedness,  he  would  have  had 
all  the  old  coast  fortifications  made  thoroughly  modem 
and  defensible  from  the  land  as  well  as  the  sea  side,  so 
that  they  might  not  be  an  easy  prey  to  expeditions  land- 
ing at  unprotected  points  and  taking  them  helplessly  in 
the  rear.  He  was  in  favor  of  a  navy  of  might  enough  to 
face  any  fleet  in  the  world,  with  scientific  basic  crews  in 
time  of  peace  and  an  ample  reserve.  However,  the  navy 
was  not  a  special  interest  of  his.  His  personal  inclinations 
were  toward  soldiering  and  he  thought  and  wrote  con- 
tinually on  army  evolution. 

He  favored  the  creation  of  a  regular  army  of  somewhere 
around  two  hundred  thousand  men  with  a  large  super- 
numerary corps  of  officers.  He  urged  the  development  of 
special  services  such  as  artillery ,  machine  guns  and  aviation , 
to  the  highest  perfection.  He  favored  the  accumulation  of 
great  reserves  of  guns,  small  arms,  aeroplanes  and  all  other 
instrumentalities  of  war,  so  that  in  case  of  the  sudden 
raising  of  a  great  army  the  material  would  be  ready,  at 
hand,  to  put  it  in  the  field  without  delay.  But  he  realized 
that  all  these  provisions  would  be  without  effect  if  the  men 
were  not  ready  to  make  use  of  them.  He  therefore  advo- 
cated universal  military  training  of  the  young  men  of  the 
coimtry,  each  in  some  convenient  year  between  the  stages 
of  boyhood  and  manhood,  when  the  subject  was  most 
amenable  to  discipline  and  instruction,  and  would  suffer 
least  detriment  in  the  shaping  of  his  personal  career.  His 
views  on  this  subject  were  based  on  his  study  of  the  Swiss 
and  Australian  systems. 

He  was  always  convinced  that  the  great  majority  of 
the  American  people  shared  his  views  on  this  subject. 
His  appraisal  of  public   opinion   was   embodied  in  an 


192  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

article,   headed  Principle  Always,   which  was  pubUshed 
on  June  i,  1915: 

Never  before  was  Memorial  Day  more  fraught  than  yester- 
day with  all  that  is  calculated  to  stir  the  spirit  of  true  Ameri- 
canism. The  thin  columns  of  gray  haired  men  have  heretofore 
served  only  to  remind  the  citizens  of  today  of  the  agony  the 
nation  endured  for  a  principle  only  half  a  century  ago;  the 
younger  veterans  of  the  war  with  Spain  have  proved  that 
within  the  present  generation  the  same  devotion  to  principle 
still  burned ;  but  now  the  consciousness  of  those  who  watched 
them  march  is  quickened  by  the  knowledge  that  their  country 
faces  a  test  of  principle  more  trying,  perhaps,  than  any  it  ever 
before  faced.   .    .    . 

No  true  American,  by  birth  or  by  allegiance,  can  fail  to 
feel  the  import  of  a  day  like  yesterday.  It  was  a  day  to  stamp 
out  hyphens  and  inspire  Americanism.  It  was  a  day  to  make 
those  who  in  the  past  have  omitted  to  hang  out  the  flag  at  the 
window  as  a  formality  feel  that  in  1 915  it  is  a  patriotic  duty. 

At  the  same  time,  he  resented  making  the  Fourth  of 
July  "Americanization  Day."  It  was  unnecessary,  he 
argued  on  June  21,  and  an  insult  to  the  patriotic  spirit  of 
the  people.  The  presumption  should  be  that  foreign-bom 
citizens  were  Americanized  when  or  before  they  took  out 
their  papers.  ' '  If  not,  they  never  can  be  Americanized  in 
the  sense  that  we  desire."  He  thought  all  discrimination 
between  different  sorts  of  citizens  should  be  avoided. 
Even  some  citizens  by  birth  "seem  at  times  to  accept  too 
thoughtlessly  the  privileges  that  cost  a  former  generation 
so  much  blood;"  but  broadly  he  thought  the  loyalty  and 
devotion  of  the  people  could  not  be  questioned.  He 
found,  however,  inconsiderate  selfishness  in  certain  places 
and  a  week  or  two  later,  in  The  Spirit  oj  1915, 
he  scourged  employers  who  threw  obstacles  in  the 
way  of  National  Guardsmen  attending  the  instruction 
camps.     The  principle  of  service  in  a  democracy  he  set 


Democracy's  Call  193 

forth  with  spirit  and  truth  in  a  long  article  printed  on 
July  14,  1916: 

Democracy  as  understood  and  carried  out  in  this  country,  to 
begin  with,  has  required  and  does  require  the  lives  of  its  citizens 
when  needed  for  its  defence.  Democracy  elsewhere,  when- 
ever pressed  sufficiently  has  compelled  its  citizens  to  render 
military  service.  What  is  more,  the  very  theory  of  democracy 
implies  compulsory  military  service  and  justifies  what  has  been 
the  practice  of  democracy  since  its  beginning. 

The  civil  war  furnished  the  precedent  for  conscription  in  the 
United  States.  No  less  a  democrat  than  Lincoln  ordered  the 
drafting  of  men  into  the  Union  army.  He  did  no  more  than 
follow  suit  after  the  Confederacy  had  taken  a  similar  step. 
Abroad,  the  most  radical  democracy  that  ever  existed  and 
made  good  its  existence  by  trial  of  arms  was  also  the  inventor 
of  conscription  in  its  modern  and  national  sense.  The  first 
French  Republic,  driven  by  necessity,  created  a  system  of 
drafting  based  on  the  principle  that  every  man  not  only  was 
in  duty  bound  to  bear  arms  for  the  republic,  but  that  the  ser- 
vice of  every  man  not  disqualified  would  actually  be  required ; 
the  soldiery  ceased  to  form  a  class  apart  and  the  citizen  became 
a  citizen  soldier.  More  recent  practice  in  such  thoroughgoing 
democracies  as  Switzerland,  Australia  and  New  Zealand  shows 
how  keen  is  the  realization  of  the  democratic  military  ideal 
of  general  compulsory  service. 

Why  does  a  democracy  necessarily  involve  such  an  ideal? 
The  democratic  state,  despite  its  principle  of  the  utmost  possi- 
ble liberty  to  the  individual,  is  logically  compelled  to  place 
certain  compulsions  upon  its  citizens;  compulsions  without 
which  their  very  existence  and  that  liberty  which  they  have 
would  be  menaced.  It  subjects  citizens  to  laws  and  to  taxa- 
tion. If  democracy  can  go  so  far  as  to  restrain  by  law  and  to 
constrain  by  tax  for  the  insurance  of  the  benefits  of  liberty, 
by  so  much  the  more  can  it  require  the  first  service  of  all  for 
defence,  which  guarantees  preservation  of  the  democratic  state 
and  all  its  people  and  institutions  from  absolute  and  final 
overthrow. 
13 


194  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

Ideal  democracy  is  no  whining  beggar,  suppliant  to  the 
passing  benefactor;  it  does  not  exist  simply  by  the  good 
graces  of  the  volunteer  soldier.  Nor  does  it  tolerate  a  mighty 
class  apart,  of  paid  soldiery,  where  classes  are  all  abolished 
in  universal  equality.  With  its  knowledge  that  the  protecting 
class  requires  the  rights  of  a  ruling  class,  it  lays  the  burden  of 
defence  on  all  its  citizens.  By  the  strength  of  its  right  to 
existence,  that  it  may  not  perish  from  the  earth,  it  unhesi- 
tatingly imposes  the  burden  whenever  needful. 

In  "For  America,"  on  August  i,  he  supplemented 
this  by  saying  that  all  "reasonable  Americans  compre- 
hend that  the  safety  of  the  United  States  depends  at  all 
times  upon  a  force  ready  for  emergency  work." 

For  all  the  forms  of  disloyalty  from  pacifism  to  inter- 
nationalism and  from  hyphenism  to  anarchy  he  had  a 
passionate  intolerance,  which  grew  more  and  more  intense 
in  the  early  quarter  of  191 7  when  the  war  grew  nearer  and 
nearer  to  the  United  States  and  his  own  destiny  called 
more  and  more  plainly.  "  The-man-without-a-country 
pose  ...  so  busily  preached  by  agitators  who,  we  must 
believe  out  of  charity,  know  not  what  they  do,"  he  feared 
might  "inculcate  in  young  Americans  a  spirit  of  dis- 
loyalty which  will  ultimately  work  to  their  own  ruin  and 
that  of  their  country.  It  is  well  enough  to  hope  for  a  world 
in  which  there  may  be  no  more  war  .  .  .  but  it  is  well  to 
bear  in  mind  that,  if  American  liberty  be  not  preserved, 
the  approximation  of  an  ideal  condition  for  mankind  will 
not  be  rendered  easier."  Again,  on  January  2^] ,  he 
wrote  that  "the  only  'rights'  an  American  citizen  has  are 
privileges  and  advantages  which,  in  the  last  resort,  he 
may  have  to  defend  with  his  life."  Once  more  on  Febru- 
ary 7:  "The  cost  of  unpreparedness  cannot  be  esti- 
mated in  dollars  and  cents.  It  must  be  calculated  in 
human  lives.  ...  If  the  United  States  cannot  be  strong 
enough  to  protect  its  own  and  just  enough  to  respect  the 


Crush  Disloyalty  i95 

rights  of  others,  American  freedom  has  been  a  myth  from 
the  start  and  will  not  remain  long  unexploded." 

Naturally  the  teaching  of  anarchism,  nihilism,  bolshe- 
vism  or  extreme  socialism  seemed  to  him  nothing  better 
than  treason.  Under  the  heading,  Education  in  Sedi- 
tion, he  thus  backed  up  a  warning  uttered  by  a  sincere 
American,  whose  indiscreet  altruism,  however  well  meant 
and  however  judicially  qualified,  has  not  failed  to  be  a 
source  of  danger  to  pure  Americanism : 

It  would  have  been  bad  enough  if  ex-President  Taft  had 
stated  the  whole  case  when  he  said  that : 

"The  youths  of  our  country  are  coming  to  age  without 
realizing  the  responsibilities  of  government." 

But  it  is  worse  even  than  this.  There  is  a  definite  campaign 
afoot  to  breed  in  the  minds  of  American  youths  the  idea  that 
they  owe  allegiance  and  responsibility  only  to  "humanity" — 
although  they  are  to  take  public  schooling,  police  protection 
and  any  other  advantages  that  they  can  get  for  nothing  from 
the  United  States.  Sooner  or  later  it  will  be  necessary  for  the 
United  States  to  take  thought  as  to  what  effect  the  contin- 
ued preaching  of  such  sedition  will  have  ultimately  on 
its  Government. 

On  another  occasion,  he  was  still  more  emphatic : 

Not  to  be  Tolerated 

The  right  of  free  speech  is  not  broad  enough  to  cover  agita  • 
tion,  selfish  or  sentimental,  to  prevent  war  by  means  of 
general  strikes,  anti-enlistment  organization  or  resistance  to 
military  draft,  no  matter  what  the  country's  provocation  may 
be.  Ordinarily  little  attention  is  paid  to  those  who  preach 
disloyalty  in  this  fashion,  but  at  a  time  when  the  country  is 
passing  through  one  of  the  most  dangerous  crises  in  its  his- 
tory their  activities  become  an  actual  menace  and  cannot  be 
ignored. 

The  right  of  free  speech  was  incorporated  as  one  of  the 


196  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

fundamental  elements  of  American  independence,  but  we 
doubt  if  the  men  who  fought  to  establish  that  independence 
conceived  it  to  be  possible  that  any  American  citizen  would 
ever  invoke  that  right  to  protect  him  in  preaching  allegiance 
only  to  a  "humanity"  higher  than  and  beyond  the  Govern- 
ment of  the  United  States.  The  "American  without  a  coun- 
try" idea  is  of  comparatively  recent  origin.  In  such  a  time  as 
this  it  should  be  dealt  with  summarily,  whether  enunciated 
from  the  soap  box  or  in  Congress  or  aired  through  the  medium 
of  pacifistic  literature. 

He  reiterated  the  need  for  men;  "Guns  must  have 
Pointers, ' '  he  showed  in  an  article  on  arming  the  merchant 
ships.  He  became  aroused  over  the  delay  of  the  Govern- 
ment in  facing  the  inevitable,  beating  at  the  nation's 
doors. 

On  April  25,  an  unheaded  article  led  the  editorial  page 
in  salutation  to  the  French  war  delegation,  whose  coming 
visit  to  the  United  States  was  announced  in  the  morning 
newspapers;  he  wrote  it.     It  read: 

Hail  to  "Papa"  Joffre,  Marshal  of  France!  His  country 
could  have  sent  us  no  other  representative  to  be  counted  on  so 
surely  to  inspire  admiration  and  affection  in  Americans.  In- 
deed, we  loved  him  before  ever  he  came  to  us — the  quiet, 
unassuming  but  masterful  personality  against  which  the 
voluble  bluster  of  Teutonic  egotism  broke  itself  and  was 
hurled  back  in  the  first  agony  of  defeat. 

Here  is  a  man  who  can  hold  his  tongue — characteristic, 
truly  of  a  superman !  His  very  silence  is  sufficient  example  to 
Americans  to  do,  not  to  talk.  In  the  presence  of  this  great 
Frenchman  can  the  United  States  hesitate  to  provide  forth- 
with the  soldiers  required  to  finish  the  work  which  the  poilus 
under  his  direction  so  gloriously  began  ? 

Viviani,  the  eloquent  voice  of  France,  and  Joffre,  the  arm 
that  has  wielded  her  sword  so  well  in  defence  of  democracy, 
must  stir  us  to  the  action  for  which  our  allies  wait. 


A  Last  Word  i97 

The  articles  and  extracts  from  articles  here  given  are 
only  a  fraction  of  Mills's  war  work.  He  wrote  attacks 
on  the  Central  Powers,  argumentative  and  temperamental ; 
he  discussed  every  detail  of  military  preparation.  A  great 
deal  of  his  writing  was  bitter  polemic,  called  forth  by  the 
circumstances  of  the  moment  and  chiefly  directed  against 
slowTiess  and  insufficiency  in  preparation  for  the  deadly 
struggle.  Naturally  a  great  part  of  this  was  similar  in 
tone  and  character  to  the  work  of  those  associated  with 
him  and  much  of  it  has  lost  its  edge  and  interest  from 
lapse  of  time.  The  effort  here  has  been  to  give  illustrations 
in  which  his  personality  asserted  itself  with  lasting  trench- 
ancy.  As  his  first  editorial  has  been  given  in  this  chapter, 
so  shall  be  his  last. 

Some  men  would  have  looked  for  means  of  making  this 
effort  in  some  sense  a  dramatic  cHmax.  It  was  character- 
istic in  Mills  that  he  never  thought  of  doing  so.  He  was 
far  too  simple  and  sincere.  Yet,  by  an  odd  coincidence, 
the  headline  of  the  article  is  significant  and  the  tone  is  in 
keeping  with  the  step  he  was  just  about  to  take  as  he  wrote 
it.     It  was  written  and  published  on  May  lo,  191 7  • 

Greeting  and  Dedication 

There  was  a  particular  appropriateness  in  the  fact  that, 
instead  of  men  in  uniform,  children,  boys  and  girls  from  the 
public  schools  made  up  the  most  notable  contingent  of  New 
Yorkers  chosen  to  extend  the  city's  formal  greeting  to  Marshal 
Joffre,  M.  Viviani,  and  the  other  members  of  the  French  war 
commission  on  the  City  Hall  plaza  yesterday. 

It  is  for  the  citizens  of  to-morrow,  the  children  of  to-day, 
that  the  poilus,  whom  the  great  Field  Marshal  has  led  and  as 
whose  representatives  he  and  his  distinguished  associates  now 
come  to  us,  have  been  fighting  for  nearly  three  years.  It  is 
for  these  citizens  of  to-morrow  that  the  soldiers  of  America 
must  now  do  their  part. 


198  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

That  the  children  of  to-day,  the  children  not  only  of  France 
and  England  and  America  and  of  the  other  Allied  and  neutral 
nations,  but  the  children  also  of  Germany  and  her  allies,  may 
grow  up  free  men  and  women  the  civilized  forces  of  the  world 
are  now  contending  against  a  renascent  barbarism  the  more 
terrible  in  that  it  grasps  and  turns  to  its  own  ghastly  purposes 
the  products  of  man's  genius  throughout  the  centuries. 

That  there  could  be  any  other  than  one  outcome  of  this 
struggle,  that  America  should  not  play  a  heroic  part  in  this 
struggle — both  are  unthinkable!  And  there  was  something 
profoundly  symbolic  in  the  presence  of  American  children  at 
the  ceremony  in  which  America's  greatest  city  dedicated  its 
heart  and  soul  and  strength  to  the  battle  for  the  freedom  of  the 
world.  No  wonder  that  men  were  moved  to  tears,  they  knew 
not  why. 

All  along,  during  the  two  years  that  he  furnished  these 
important  contributions  to  the  public  understanding  of  the 
war  and  of  so  many  other  serious  questions.  Mills  furnished 
daily  a  number  of  short  paragraphs,  generally  of  a  witty 
turn,  upon  current  happenings.  Just  two  or  three  of  these 
may  be  rescued  from  the  jaws  of  time,  to  show  the  style : 

March  3,  191 5 — The  circus  has  the  spineless  woman  on 
exhibition  at  the  Garden;  the  State  of  New  York  is  exhibiting 
the  spineless  man  at  Albany. 

April  I,  1 91 5 — Revised  figures  show  that  Philadelphia  paid 
Billy  Sunday  at  the  rate  of  $2.93  a  head  for  making  converts 
there,  while  the  election  rate  for  repeaters  in  Terre  Haute  was 
only  $1  per.  The  Hon.  Billy  makes  the  politicians  look  like 
pikers. 

March  17,  191 6 — The  most  important  spring  opening  so  far 
announced  is  the  Panama  Canal,  April  15. 

August  7, 1 91 6 — Undoubtedly  the  Long  Islander  who  killed  a 
shark  with  a  baseball  bat  dreamed  that  he  was  for  once  getting 
even  with  the  umpire. 

March  13,  191 7 — The  poor  benighted  Hindoo,  he  does  the 


Appraisal  by  a  Colleague  i99 

best  he  kindoo,  to  get  a  little  easy  honey  out  of  the  Kaiser's 
secret  service  money. 

April  6,  191 7— The  Reichstag  seeks  needlessly  for  some  such 
title  as  "WiUiam  the  Faithful"  whereby  to  bequeath  the 
Kaiser  to  posterity.  History  will  write  him  "William  the 
Conquered." 

Light-hearted  stuff!  Trivial?  Well,  the  public  had  its 
daily  smile. 

Now,  while  Mills  was  thus  pursuing  his  trade  as  critic  of 
events,  it  will  be  of  interest  to  learn  how  he  developed  his 
own  personality  and  what  impression  he  made  upon  the 
men  with  whom  he  was  most  closely  associated.  One  of 
these  was  Mr.  PhiHp  Coan,  the  second  in  seniority  of  the 
editorial  writers  of  The  Evening  Sun.  He  and  Mills  had  a 
cordial  acquaintance  of  some  years'  standing.  In  the 
diaries,  there  are  memoranda  of  long  walks  they  took 
together  in  the  Orange  Mountains.  Mr.  Coan  has  pre- 
pared for  this  book  an  "appreciation"  of  his  dead  friend. 
It  supplies  the  need  for  an  intimate  personal  view  at  this 
point.     It  is  given  in  full  as  written : 

By  Philip  Coan 

Quincy  came  to  us  in  the  editorial  room  of  The  Evening 
Sun  when  the  war  in  Europe  had  been  going  on  about  half 
a  year.  The  three  other  occupants  of  that  room  were, 
personally,  early  and  earnest  sympathizers  with  the  cause 
of  the  nations  leagued  together  to  resist  Germany.  They 
were  men  who  had  lived  more  or  less  in  Europe  and  gained 
thus,  as  in  their  work,  very  definite  ideas  about  the  con- 
flict. The  newcomer  in  this  little  group  was  on  the  con- 
trary identified  with  other  thoughts  and  activities.  He 
took  in  his  work  an  earnest  interest  and  pride  which  was  a 
delight  to  behold.  When  not  writing,  he  occupied  himself 
with  reading  and  storing  away  pamphlets  and  pubhc  docu- 


200  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

ments  which  accumulated  in  impressive  bundles  on  the 
shelves.  They  related  to  his  specialty ;  and  that  specialty 
was  the  public  business  of  the  city  and  state  of  New  York, 
the  thing  known  among  us  as  local  politics. 

Even  at  that  time,  it  is  true,  the  man  felt  and  expressed 
the  natural  and  healthy  dislike,  or  better,  contempt  for 
the  brutal  nation  that  was  piling  up  so  much  crass  success. 
He  felt  the  first  movement  of  admiration  for  the  gallant 
resistance  of  the  invaded  nations  on  the  Western  front. 
But  this  feeling  was  not  yet  intensely  personal,  and  his 
chief  thoughts  ran  in  another  direction.  In  all  this  he 
was  the  average  generous-minded  but  healthily  and 
properly  home-thinking  young  typical  American  of  his 
age.  We  saw  the  change  as  it  came  over  him  in  the  next 
year  or  so,  altering  him  from  the  sympathetic  but  detached 
spectator  of  the  foreign  tragedy  into  an  unflinching,  burn- 
ing champion  of  American  armed  intervention.  And  this 
change,  I  think,  was  also  typical  of  that  going  on  in  thou- 
sands of  young  men  more  or  less  like  himself:  very  like 
him  indeed  in  thoughts  of  what  was  right  and  advisable 
in  this  crisis  for  their  beloved  country. 

The  influence  of  several  men  closeted  together  day  after 
day  and  working  side  by  side  in  an  endeavor  to  catch  and 
express  the  sense  of  events  of  topmost  general  importance 
is  a  subtle  thing.  Such  a  group  of  men  come  to  share 
in  common  opinions,  sentiments,  that  they  could  not  for 
the  life  of  them  remember  having  discussed.  Discussion 
enough  among  them  there  is,  but  it  commonly  takes  the 
form  of  tilts  leading  to  apparent  disagreements.  The 
disagreements  are  over  matters  of  detail,  often,  which 
look  enormously  important  at  the  moment,  but  a  brief 
absence  or  the  current  contact  with  the  views  of  outside 
folk  affords  constant  reminders  of  how  close  has  grown  the 
mental  partnership  of  the  collaborators.  Quincy  un- 
doubtedly took  on   some  of  his  increasingly  intimate 


Awakening  201 

interest  in  the  war  and  America's  attitude  from  his  daily- 
companions.  They  have  now  in  their  minds  the  con- 
sciousness that  they  played,  among  his  other  associates,  a 
part,  however  unconscious,  in  preparing  his  sacrifice  to 
the  cause  of  a  safer  civilization. 

But  when  I  come  to  seek  recollection  of  the  little 
happenings  that  marked  the  awakening  of  the  servant  of  a 
high  cause  in  our  companion,  the  particulars  for  the  most 
part  elude  me.  He  used  to  come  and  observe  the  alter- 
ations in  the  military  line  that  I  kept  marked  on  a  map 
with  colored  tacks.  He  must  have  participated  in  the 
endless  talk  about  the  fighting  situation  that  went  on.  I 
do  not  remember  that  the  cruel  gas  attack,  the  first  of  its 
kind,  near  Ypres,  drew  from  him  any  especial  comment ;  on 
the  wrongfulness  of  such  lawless  warfare  we  were  all  pretty 
well  agreed. 

Then  they  sank  the  great  liner  Lusitania,  and  over  one 
hundred  Americans,  men,  women  and  children,  went  down. 
This  touched  him  directly  in  his  patriotic  sentiments  as  an 
American.  It  gave  him,  I  think,  his  first  definite  idea 
that  we  should  sooner  or  later  have  to  enter  the  struggle. 
The  dismay  at  those  deaths  came  very  close.  It  produced 
in  him  the  natural  and  common  anger  with  the  German 
ambassador  von  Bernstorff.  He  could  not  understand 
or  condone  the  actions  of  the  U-Boats  which  lent  no  hand 
while  their  victims  drowned.  The  fate  of  these  country- 
men of  his  brought  closer  to  him  the  sufferings  of  the 
harried  and  outraged  population  of  the  invaded  regions, 
as  the  particulars  of  that  more  distant  horror  little  by  little 
came  in. 

Quincy's  personal  acquaintance  with  Mayor  Mitchel 
grew  stronger  no  doubt  in  the  months  that  followed. 
Mitchel  played  in  his  case  the  part  of  a  leader,  to  a  certain 
extent;  a  leader  closer  and  better  known  than  Roosevelt. 
He  soon  became  an  enthusiastic  supporter  of  the  campaign 


202  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

for  military  preparedness.  I  recall  his  disappointment  at 
the  rejection  of  Secretary  of  War  Garrison's  plan  for 
improving  the  militia,  and  his  dislike  for  the  substitute 
legislation  providing  what  he  deemed  a  mere  miHtia 
subsidy.  He  branched  out  from  his  specialty  of  local 
affairs,  to  write  earnest  and  vigorous  editorials  on  the  sub- 
ject of  military  preparation.  He  had  reached  by  the 
middle  of  191 6  a  conviction  that  we  should  have  to  go  to 
war  in  the  near  future.  He  dreaded  the  prospect  of  an 
initial  botch  which  might  greatly  increase  the  cost  in  lives 
for  us.  He  felt  in  this  stage  of  his  transformation  that 
he  would  before  long  become  a  part  of  the  army  that  must 
go  overseas. 

Some  have  formed  the  idea  that  this  destined  soldier  felt 
on  going  into  the  war  a  presentiment  of  what  it  had  in  store 
for  him.  Of  this  possibility  I  had  no  direct  evidence ;  on 
the  other  hand  I  recall  that  he  entertained  for  months,  as 
the  time  of  his  passage  from  us  approached,  a  besetting 
consciousness  of  the  gravity  of  the  task  looming  ahead :  his 
and  the  country's.  He  would  repeat  with  approval  the 
warnings  given  out  to  the  student  officers  at  the  Platts- 
burg  camp,  that  we  must  stand  ready  to  fight  for  several 
years  and  lose  men  by  the  million.  In  part,  he  accepted 
these  depressing  prophecies  instructively  as  an  inoculation 
against  discouragement,  which  they  were.  At  the  same 
time  it  was  his  nature  to  measure  the  leap  before  taking  it 
and  to  count  coldly  and  methodically  the  cost  of  a  duty 
which  he  followed  as  compelling.  Impulsive  and  dashing 
men  such  as  we  all  know  make  the  surrender  of  themselves 
without  stopping  to  consider.  Without  detracting  from 
the  peculiar  virtue  of  such  men  of  the  headlong  type,  one 
may  hold  that  the  man  who  calculates  the  full  nature  of 
the  peril  before  him  and  knowing  it  accepts  the  course  that 
his  conscience  commands  displays  in  its  full  flower  that 
faculty  of  man  which  we  call  the  free  and  dominant  will. 


Plattsburg  Evolution  203 

Between  his  absences  at  the  Plattsburg  training  camp, 
our  colleague  spent  several  busy  months  with  us.  I 
remember  his  return  from  the  first  course  of  training, 
heavier,  ruddy  and  brisk  of  movement,  but  with  mind 
disused  by  different  toil  to  the  kind  of  mental  task  at 
which  he  had  long  revealed  his  excellence  among  us.  It 
was  not  a  different  man  who  thus  returned,  but  at  least  a 
modified  one.  He  had  already  taken  something  and  given 
something  which  marked  him  apart.  We  saw  the  begin- 
ning of  the  change  that  made  him  over  into  a  higher  being 
than  even  the  faithful  thinker  and  toiler  and  the  brave 
believer  in  worthy  things  whom  we  had  known. 

Few  men  could  have  had  less  to  say,  vocally,  on  the 
purpose  with  which  they  went  to  war.  The  business  in 
hand  occupied  him.  He  did  not  waste  his  breath  on  the 
ins  and  outs  of  a  conflict  that  breath  alone,  in  his  evident 
opinion,  would  not  settle.  He  had,  I  think,  the  gift  of 
putting  the  problem  before  himself  in  its  simplest  terms, 
that  is,  of  narrowing  his  field  of  intense  reactions  to  the 
work  in  hand.  His  conscience  led  him  to  action  through 
appeal  to  the  diligent  reason  and  perceptions  of  an  editor ; 
but  when  he  went  to  war  he  left  behind  him  the  sedentary 
weakness  of  the  editorial  mind. 


CHAPTER  VII 

Final  Training  at  Plattsburg  and  a  False  Start  for  France — De- 
pressing Conditions  and  an  Inadequate  Commission — Assign- 
ment TO  AN  Iowa  Regiment. 

By  this  time  it  will  have  become  plain  that  Mills  was 
not  the  man  to  cry  preparedness  to  other  people  and  re- 
main inactive  himself.  The  truth  is  that,  as  he  formed  the 
opinion  that  the  United  States  would  have  to  enter  the 
war  sooner  or  later  and  as  it  grew  stronger  and  stronger 
in  him,  the  resolve  developed  side  by  side  with  his  con- 
viction that  he  should  do  a  man's  part — a  young  man's 
part — in  the  great  duty  of  National  defence.  He  was 
beyond  the  age  for  conscription,  at  least  on  the  first  call, 
but  he  never  thought  of  that.  It  was  his  will  and  his 
pleasure  to  do  his  duty  by  his  country. 

Further,  he  made  up  his  mind  to  render  the  best  service 
he  could.  He  was  conscious  that  he  had  something  to  give 
besides  his  life.  He  realized  that  to  go  in  as  a  private 
soldier  would  be  to  waste  himself.  But  if  he  expected  to 
serve  as  an  officer  and  to  captain  other  men,  he  knew  that 
he  must  prepare  in  a  special  way.  He  had  lived  thirty 
years  as  a  man  of  peace,  a  thorough-going  civilian ;  to  be 
ready  to  do  effective  work  as  a  soldier,  he  must  begin  early 
and  work  hard  to  acquire  military  training.  The  oppor- 
tunity came  when  the  Government  announced  its  plans 
for  the  training  camp  for  business  men  at  Plattsburg  in 
the  late  summer  of  19 15.  Mills  determined  to  devote 
his  vacation  to  this  experience  and  arranged  with  The 

204 


Early  Soldiering  205 

Evening  Sun  office  for  an  extension  to  cover  the  whole 
encampment. 

He  was  one  of  the  first  to  apply  for  duty  in  the  camp  and 
he  was  accepted.  Mayor  Mitchel,  influenced  by  exactly 
similar  motives,  also  enrolled  as  did  more  than  a  thousand 
citizens  of  New  York  of  high  standing  in  business,  law, 
medicine  and  journalism.  There  were  three  encampments 
altogether,  the  first  for  college  students  early  in  the  sum- 
mer, the  others  running  from  August  lo  to  September 
6  and  September  8  to  October  6.  Mills  was  in  the  Au- 
gust tour.  He  was  assigned  to  Company  A  of  the  First 
Regiment  and  had  become  a  Corporal  when  the  training 
period  came  to  a  close.  Robert  L.  Bacon  of  diplomatic 
fame  and  Mayor  Mitchel  were  the  amateur  Heutenants  of 
the  company.  The  roster  reads  like  a  directory  of  direc- 
tors, or  a  list  of  social  leaders.  Out  of  these  men,  as  in  the 
case  of  Mills,  and  their  like  in  other  parts  of  the  country, 
the  American  Expeditionary  army  was  largely  officered 
two  years  later. 

To  Mills,  the  service  meant  sacrifice  in  many  ways. 
There  were  a  dozen  more  entertaining  things  he  might 
have  done  during  his  vacation.  To  make  up  for  the  loss 
of  pay  for  two  weeks  of  extra  leave,  he  had  to  utilize 
every  moment  he  could  save  from  duty  to  write  the  news 
of  the  camp  for  The  Eveyiing  Sun.  He  started  off,  however, 
in  high  spirits  and  on  the  evening  of  his  arrival  sent  a 
letter  to  his  mother,  telling  her  of  all  the  men  he  knew  in 
the  gathering  and  of  sharing  a  tent  with  five  comrades 
and  being  quite  at  home  despite  a  fierce  rain  beating  down 
on  the  canvas.  Indeed  he  enjoyed  the  experience  through- 
out, and  profited  by  it  in  health  and  physical  condition. 
It  had  even  a  broadening  effect  on  his  mentality. 

He  shot  well,  making  'jy  out  of  a  possible  lOO  in  his 
first  try-out  at  the  ranges.  Later,  he  qualified  as  a  marks- 
m^an,  and  brought  home  a  Sharpshooter's  Medal  as  proof 


2o6  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

of  his  prowess;  "pretty  good  work,"  he  says  on  a  picture 
postal  card,  "for  a  rookie  who  never  shot  a  rifle  before. 
The  reason  was  that  I  saw  a  spiked  helmet  on  top  of  every 
bull's-eye  I  shot  at. "  He  came  through  the  *  *  hike"  or  long 
march  of  several  days  with  which  the  encampment  ter- 
minated in  fine  shape.  Just  as  he  started,  the  Outlook  for 
August  25  reached  him  with  his  maiden  effort  in  maga- 
zine writing.  It  was  an  article  on  New  York  under  a 
Commission  Form  of  Government.  He  had  written  it 
and  it  was  accepted  several  months  previously;  he  wrote 
his  mother  that  it  had  lost  its  acute  interest  by  the  delay. 
It  was,  however,  a  clever  outline  of  the  municipal  ma- 
chinery and  it  included  statements  by  the  Mayor,  Comp- 
troller Prendergast  and  President  McAneny  as  to  their 
plans  and  ideals  for  civic  upbuilding. 

Mills's  letters  to  The  Evening  Sun  were  breezy  and 
sketchy,  but  thought  and  purpose  always  ran  through 
them.    One  he  began  with  a  bit  of  tent  doggerel : 

Oh,  the  infantry,  the  infantry,  with  dirt  behind  their  ears; 
Oh,  the  infantry,  the  infantry,  that  drink  their  weight  in  beers — 
Oh,  the  cavalry,  artillery  and  the  bloomin'  engineers, 
They  couldn't  lick  the  infantry  in  a  hundred  thousand  years ! 

This  was  sung  to  the  tune  of  A  Son  of  a  Gamholeer,  by 
the  marching  men. 

"But  what  about  it  if  you  haven't  got  any  infantry,  or 
cavalry,  or  engineers  to  speak  of  ? "  was  the  comment  of  a 
United  States  officer  who  listened  and  watched. 

Here  was  the  keynote  of  all  the  articles :  What  it  the 
country  had  not  the  troops,  how  could  it  protect  itself? — 
the  need  of  preparation ! 

One  strange  piece  of  psychology  he  noted.  The  en- 
rolled business  men  never  mentioned  the  war  that  was 
raging  across  the  sea.  It  was  too  serious.  There  was  no 
formal  taboo,  but  not  a  word.    Naturally  the  sayings  and 


"Plattsburg  Psychology"  207 

doings  of  Mayor  Mitchel  and  all  the  local  celebrities  were 
mentioned,  sometimes  with  rather  unsparing  fun,  but 
always  good-naturedly.  The  letters  were  a  strong  feature 
and  a  great  circulation  maker  for  the  paper.  An  interview 
with  Mayor  Mitchel,  based  on  his  observation  and  experi- 
ence, emphasized  the  folly  of  the  old  militia  or  volunteer 
style  of  raising  a  modern  army. 

All  the  reports  from  the  first  camp,  that  of  191 5, 
whether  written  for  publication  or  for  family  reading  were 
highly  optimistic.  The  effect  on  the  men  both  personally 
and  in  a  military  sense  was  appraised  by  Mills  as  advan- 
tageous. One  product  of  his  observation  was  a  long  edi- 
torial on  Plattshurg  Psychology  which  was  published  on 
September  25.  The  occasion  was  the  encampment  of 
the  New  York  National  Guard  regiments  at  Van  Cortlandt 
Park  with  an  attendance  of  10,000  men.  This  was  not  a 
war  move,  but  the  spirit  underlying  it  was  akin  to  that  of 
Plattsburg.  The  article  urged  citizens  to  visit  the  camp 
and  see  the  great  military  show,  but  not  to  miss  the  lesson 
underlying  it.    In  it  Mills  said  these  wise  things : 

Plattsburg's  camps  would  have  been  a  waste  of  money  if 
they  had  produced  no  other  effect  on  the  students  than  an 
admiration  and  a  desire  for  the  military  life.  This  the  camps 
are  not  doing.  They  are  taking  a  mass  of  raw  material,  mixed 
in  with  which  there  are  some  adventurous  spirits  of  course 
who  would  not  object  to  taking  any  sort  of  chance  at  any  time, 
but  the  great  part  of  which  consists  of  serious-minded  men  who 
are  vaguely  apprehensive  that  the  country  may  not  be  able  to 
take  care  of  itself  in  case  of  trouble.  In  the  mass,  the  camps 
are  developing  an  educated  mental  state  that  knows  why  the 
national  danger  exists  and  what  to  do  to  remedy  it.  Platts- 
burg is  actually  training  a  psychological  army,  not  a  physical 
one. 

The  psychology  of  these  military  instruction  camps  and  the 
way  in  which  it  is  created  are  the  most  interesting  things 


2o8  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

about  them.  The  detachment  from  the  outside  world  is 
remarkable.  The  camps  owe  their  existence  certainly  to  the 
Great  War  and  their  critics  charge  that  they  are  conducted  for 
the  purpose  of  promoting  war,  yet  war  is  the  one  subject  that  is 
not  discussed  in  these  tent  cities.  If  it  were  forbidden  as  a 
subject  of  conversation  by  an  order  from  headquarters  scarcely 
less  cotild  be  heard  of  it.  As  a  prominent  rookie  attending  the 
first  gathering  of  business  men  on  the  shore  of  Lake  Champlain 
put  it : 

"Well,  I  guess  they  are  still  fighting  over  there,  but  I've 
been  so  busy  learning  that  I  can't  learn  to  carry  a  rifle  right 
that  darned  if  I  hadn't  forgotten  there  was  a  war."     .     .     . 

The  futility  of  our  attempting  to  resist  an  invading  force 
armed  with  machine  guns  without  a  defensive  force  similarly 
equipped  is  obvious  to  the  Plattsburg  students  and  graduates. 
Psychology  may  not  be  a  prescribed  course  at  West  Point,  but 
the  officers  at  Plattsburg  certainly  apply  it  in  admirable  fash- 
ion through  the  object  lesson  of  the  blue  steel  machine  gun 
barrel  mounted  on  its  tripod.  If  any  rookie  went  to  Platts- 
burg desirous  of  seeing  his  country  go  to  war,  the  machine  gun 
lesson  changed  him  into  a  confirmed  anti-militarist,  but  an 
ardent  advocate  of  such  steps  as  may  be  necessary  to  render 
the  country  capable  of  opposing  force  with  adequate  force  if 
the  need  should  ever  arise. 

The  infantry  in  battle  formation,  the  artillery  and  the 
machine  guns  all  went  on  exhibition  at  Van  Cortlandt  Park 
this  morning.  If  they  were  brought  out  only  to  be  viewed  as  a 
display  the  wear  and  tear  had  better  been  saved.  But  if  the 
visitors  look  behind  the  display  and  realize  that  the  entire 
National  Guard  of  the  State  of  New  York,  if  turned  into 
officers,  would  be  no  more  than  sufficient  to  officer  the  State's 
quota  of  a  volunteer  army ;  that  the  regular  army,  east  of  the 
Mississippi  River,  possesses  just  twelve  field  artillery  pieces, 
and  that  we  have  to-day  only  a  small  fraction  of  the  machine 
guns  and  the  men  to  man  them  that  we  should  need  in  case 
of  emergency,  the  manoeuvres  were  not  planned  in  vain.  Just 
as  the  Plattsburg  camps  are  held  to  teach  men  to  think  rather 


Second  Encampment  209 

than  to  fight,  to-day's  show  at  Van  Cortlandt  was  conceived 
to  make  its  audience  reflect,  not  enjoy  itself  in  smug  security. 

His  views  and  reports  of  the  second  encampment  in 
1 91 6  were  much  more  subdued.  He  was  doubtful  whether 
the  training  was  not  too  intensive  for  men  who  came  to  it 
soft  from  banks  and  law  offices  and  counting-houses.  He 
himself  was  mustered  in  as  acting  sergeant  and  he  came 
out  with  the  full  grade.  This  gave  him  a  chance  to  learn 
management  of  men ;  he  had  a  squad  of  twenty-five  or  so 
under  his  immediate  orders.  He  succeeded.  He  had  the 
approval  of  the  United  States  officers  in  charge  and  he  was 
popular  with  his  squad.  Nothing  ever  damped  his  play- 
ful spirit ;  he  forgot  a  box  or  two  of  choice  smokes  when  he 
started.  His  way  of  calling  for  them  was  this  in  huge 
letters  on  a  postal  card' 

s-o-s  s-o-s  s-o-s 

MEANING 
SEND  ON  SIGARS 

TO 

Q.  S.  Mills,  Co.  G.,  Eighth  Regiment 
Plattsburg  Training  Camp 

In  most  respects,  the  life  of  this  camp  was  a  repeti- 
tion of  the  former  one.  Mills  diversified  it  by  making  a 
trip  to  Montreal,  which  he  enjoyed  enormously.  He 
thought  the  city  most  beautiful  and  the  decoration  of  the 
churches  delighted  him.  He  makes  in  a  long  descriptive 
letter  this  singular  comment :  "  It  impresses  me  as  being 
more  American  than  any  city  in  the  United  States,  which 
I  have  visited."  He  adds:  "While  it  is  a  city  it  has  not 
lost  touch  with  the  country,  which  makes  it  a  real  habita- 
14 


210  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

tion  for  human  beings,  instead  of  a  gigantic  modem  hotel 
like  New  York,  where  people  merely  put  up  over  night." 

During  this  encampment,  he  was  greatly  impressed 
by  the  United  States  officers  with  whom  he  came  into  im- 
mediate contact.  All  of  them,  he  wrote  to  his  mother  were 
' '  men  whom  it  is  profitable  to  know. ' '  He  mentioned  with 
especial  enthusiasm  Captain  T.  Miller,  of  Macon,  Georgia, 
who  commanded  his  company.  Apparently  he  made 
Miller  his  ideal  of  a  successful  officer,  "a  strict  discipli- 
narian, yet  lovable. ' '  The  men  always  ' '  swore  by  him  but 
never  at  him."  "When  he  said,  'Go!'  the  company  got 
up  and  got  without  any  delay  whatever."  Mills  no  doubt 
made  this  man  his  model  when  he  became  an  officer.  All 
that  his  soldiers  and  his  comrades  say  of  him,  so  indicates. 
He  sent  home  a  couple  of  postal  card  photographs  of 
Miller.  The  fine,  firm  face  is  good  evidence  of  the  accu- 
racy of  his  admirer's  judgment. 

The  pace  set  in  this  camp  was  much  hotter  than  in  the 
191 5  one.  Probably  the  visible  gathering  of  war  clouds 
in  the  American  sky  influenced  the  military  experts,  in 
spite  of  the  strange  "slogan"  upon  which  the  national 
election  of  that  year  was  keyed.  Whatever  the  reason, 
they  drove  the  men  hard — too  hard  for  business  * '  rookies, ' ' 
not  accustomed  to  the  strenuous  physical  life.  Apparently 
this  condition  was  realized  when  the  "hike"  was  made. 
The  days'  marches  were  reduced.  Even  so,  some  of  the 
men  had  to  drop  out. 

Mills,  however,  went  through  with  flying  colors  and 
came  home  more  than  ever  convinced  of  the  approach  of 
war  and  determined  to  have  his  share  in  it.  His  mind  was 
so  made  up  that  he  arranged  at  once  to  continue  active 
training.  He  bought  and  studied  constantly  a  number 
of  books  on  military  science,  including  both  the  general 
principles  and  infantry  organization  and  tactics.  Early  in 
1916,  an  Officers'  Training  Corps  for  Newspapermen  was 


Prompt  Volunteer  211 

formed  in  New  York.  He  was  one  of  the  original  members. 
Among  his  papers  is  the  postal  card  notice  of  the  opening 
drill  at  eight  o'clock  on  the  evening  of  Thursday,  January 
20,  at  the  Seventy-first  Regiment  Armory,  Thirty-fourth 
Street  and  Park  Avenue.  This  organization  held  drills 
under  United  States  Army  officers  continuously  until 
191 7.  Ultimately  the  field  of  operations  was  transferred 
to  Governor's  Island.  Mills  was  an  unfailing  attendant 
until  his  entry  into  the  final  Plattsburg  camp  of  instruction 
after  war  was  declared.  By  that  time,  he  was  well 
grounded  in  the  theory  of  the  soldier's  trade  and  for  an 
amateur  was  well  drilled  in  field  tactics  and  the  manual 
of  arms. 

As  soon  as  war  was  declared  and  the  plans  for  the 
Officers'  Camp  at  Plattsburg  were  announced,  he  filed  his 
application,  secured  the  necessary  endorsements  from 
citizens  of  standing,  and  set  all  his  poHtical  influence  at 
work  to  insure  his  designation  to  it.  He  was  successful. 
He  did  his  last  work  for  The  Evening  Sun  on  Wednesday, 
May  9 — the  article  already  quoted  which  appeared  on 
the  loth.  On  the  i  ith  he  started  on  the  crowning  adven- 
ture of  his  life.  Arriving  at  Plattsburg  on  the  morning  of 
Saturday,  the  12th,  he  wrote  home  at  once  that  it  was  just 
like  old  times  to  be  there  again.  He  was  enrolled  at  first 
in  the  12th  Company,  Second  Regiment.  It  was  bitter 
cold  and  pouring  rain  and  sleeting  hail,  when  he  arrived, 
but  everyone  was  jolly.  There  was  plenty  of  coarse  but 
nourishing  food  and  despite  outrageously  hard  conditions, 
the  crowd  of  patriotic  volunteers  remained  in  good  humor 
through  the  monotony  of  the  first  days,  only  broken  by 
medical  examinations,  exchange  of  civilian  outfits  for  miH- 
tary  kits  and  other  like  preliminaries. 

Conditions  in  the  camp  were  disgracefully  bad.  Cots 
were  so  crowded  along  the  walls  of  the  wooden  barracks 
that  they  were  in  close  contact  and  the  sleepers  breathed 


212  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

into  each  others'  faces;  this  was  remedied  later  by  double 
tiering  as  in  a  ship.  There  was  no  way  of  heating  the 
shacks;  the  mess  tables  were  open  to  the  four  winds  of 
heaven  on  top  of  a  hill,  with  just  a  roof  to  stop  the  rain. 
Lighting  was  so  bad  that  reading  or  writing  after  dark  was 
almost  impossible ;  the  bathing  faciHties  were  poor  with  no 
warm  water  and  the  sanitary  provisions  were  outrageously 
inadequate  and  crude.  Only  the  cold  weather  averted 
sickness.  All  these  faults  were  remedied  by  degrees  in  the 
course  of  three  or  four  weeks,  but  as  there  had  been  five 
weeks  available  in  which  to  prepare  the  camp.  Mills  and 
his  comrades  could  not  understand — nor  can  anyone  now 
— why  the  work  should  not  have  been  done  in  advance  of 
their  arrival.  The  food  was  always  wholesome  and  plenti- 
ful, but,  considering  that  all  these  volunteers  came  from 
good  homes  and  were  designed  to  become  officers,  it  is  not 
easy  to  see  why  it  was  as  primitive  as  might  be  expected  in 
a  laborers'  camp  on  a  railway  construction  job. 

All  these  things  are  in  the  record;  they  are  a  reproach 
to  the  War  Department,  but  they  did  not  affect  the  in- 
domitable spirit  of  the  corps  of  cadets.  The  men  took  it 
all  cheerfully  and  plunged  courageously  into  the  difficult 
task  of  making  themselves  professional  army  officers  in 
eight  or  ten  weeks.  Mills  was  at  once  singled  out  as  well 
posted  on  drill  and,  "first  crack  out  of  the  box,"  he  was 
assigned  to  the  elementary  instruction  of  the  greener  men. 
But  he  lost  his  head  in  no  way;  no  one  ever  was  more 
modest.  ' '  You  may  be  sure  that  if  hard  work  will  get  me 
there,  I  will  get,"  he  writes.  Hard  work  and  his  own 
deficiencies  were  his  constant  theme,  though  he  acknowl- 
edges now  and  again  that  he  was  * '  at  least  as  good  as  the 
average."  Besides  the  unfinished  state  of  the  camp, 
another  great  error  soon  became  manifest :  the  number  of 
regular  army  officers  was  far  too  small.  At  first  it  was 
about  one  to  165  men,  later  one  to  150,  exclusive  of  field 


Chose  the  Infantry  213 

and  staff.  This,  Mills  thought,  was  just  about  one-third 
the  force  necessary  for  efficient  instruction.  To  train  150 
men  is  too  big  a  job  for  one;  "his  throat  simply  cannot 
stand  it."  As  for  the  cadets,  the  day  was  a  never  ceasing 
jump  from  one  duty  to  another,  with  the  intervals  filled 
in  with  learning  the  regulations  and  all  study  disturbed 
by  the  noise  of  the  carpenters  still  banging  away. 

However,  this  is  not  a  history  of  the  Plattsburg  camp 
but  of  Mills's  passage  through  it.  While  he  helped  break 
in  the  awkward  squad  of  his  company,  he  took  a  course  in 
signalling  himself  and  soon  was  able  to  pass  a  practical 
test  with  almost  a  hundred  per  cent  mark.  He  was  greatly 
encouraged  because  he  escaped  "bawling  out"  altogether. 
He  was  "appalled  "  at  his  own  ignorance,  but  as  he  was  as 
good  as  the  average  he  was  still  more  appalled  that  the 
country  had  to  depend  on  such  material  for  its  safety  in  a 
crisis.  At  any  rate,  when  it  was  wet  and  cold  they  were 
"more  cheerful  than  usual.  Trench  spirit!"  Mills 
had  an  attack  of  pink-eye  which  kept  him  from  study  for  a 
number  of  days,  but  he  carried  on  regardless  of  it.  He 
stopped  smoking  altogether  in  order  to  relieve  a  catarrhal 
condition  and  with  good  results.  He  had  the  strength 
of  mind  to  make  the  stoppage  a  prolonged  one  when  he 
was  sure  of  the  benefit  and  he  gave  all  his  tobacco  and 
cigars  to  a  comrade  and  sent  his  pipes  home  for  keepsakes. 
"Like  old  friends  they  are  hard  to  part  with,  even  though 
communion  with  them  be  no  longer  possible."  When  men 
were  drafted  for  artillery  training  he  did  not  apply  because 
he  did  not  consider  that  he  had  the  necessary  scientific 
grounding.  Anyway,  he  regarded  the  infantry  as  the 
real  army,  the  other  branches  being  mainly  valuable  as 
support  for  its  operations. 

His  love  for  the  beautiful  and  for  nature  was 
irrepressible.  In  June  he  wrote:  "Your  speaking  of 
looking  for  violets  when  out  walking  on  Fort  Washington 


214  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

Hill  reminds  me  to  say  that  the  woods  and  fields  through 
which  we  skirmish  are  carpeted  with  them.  And  the  grass 
fields  are  golden  with  dandelion.  I  have  never  enjoyed 
the  out-of-doors  more  in  my  life.  To  get  back  into  the 
woods  and  smell  them  when  they  are  still  bedewed  is  like 
a  translation  back  to  boyhood." 

The  transfer  of  applicants  for  commissions  in  the 
artillery  and  engineer  corps  caused  a  condensation  of 
companies.  Mills  now  found  himself  in  the  8th,  but  he 
remained  under  the  same  regular  army  commander. 
Apropos  of  this  change,  he  wrote  regarding  the  spirit  of 
the  corps  in  general :  * '  One  very  interesting  fact  is  that 
fire-eaters  are  so  rare  as  to  be  probably  non-existent.  I 
have  yet  to  hear  any  man  announce  that  he  is  full  of  fight. 
I  believe  the  hope  is  practically  unanimous  that  the  war 
may  be  at  an  end  before  many  Americans  have  to  be 
sacrificed.  But  there  is  not  a  man  here  who  would  not 
rather  go  to  the  trenches  than  see  the  war  end  in  any  but 
the  right  way.  This  is  about  as  high  ground  as  could 
be  taken  by  rational  human  beings,  it  seems  to  me. ' '  His 
mother  about  this  time  expressed  regret  that  he  had  not 
been  sent  to  the  artiller3^  as  a  less  dangerous  service.  He 
replied :  "If  anyone  is  going  into  this  war  with  the  safety 
first  idea,  he  can  be  of  more  service  at  home." 

From  the  very  outset,  the  aloofness  of  the  regular  army 
officers  from  their  men  impressed  Mills  as  a  grave  fault ! 
"Personally,"  he  writes,  "I  look  for  an  absoluta about-face 
in  the  matter  of  army  spirit  and  there  is  no  doubt  it  is 
going  to  break  some  martinets'  hearts."  This  was  a 
prophetic  remark,  as  everyone  now  knows. 

The  impression  took  on  a  personal  phase  at  an  early  day. 
The  commander  of  Mills's  company  was  a  young  lieuten- 
ant— later  promoted  to  be  captain — who  had  had  an 
unfortunate  preparation  for  the  work  and  who  was  either 
too  reserved  by  nature  or  else  misconceived  sadly  the  situ- 


Uncongenial  Command  215 

ation  at  Plattsburg.  In  a  very  long  letter  describing  the 
camp  routine,  Mills  gives  a  sketch  of  him  and  his  career. 
He  had  been  Httle  with  troops  but  had  served  for  several 
years  on  detached  service  as  a  prison  officer  at  Fort 
Leavenworth  and  as  an  instructor  at  West  Point.  "I 
have  heard,"  the  letter  goes  on,  "complaint  among  the 
members  of  the  company  that  he  is  making  the  mistake  of 
trying  to  run  a  company  of  educated  men  of  mature  years 
as  he  would  run  a  bunch  of  prisoners  or  a  class  of  boy 
cadets."  It  will  not  be  well  to  go  too  deeply  into  this 
matter.  Mills  himself  greatly  modified  his  opinion  of  this 
officer  as  time  went  on,  and  all  for  the  better.  But  there 
is  no  doubt  that  for  several  weeks  he  was  unhappy  in  his 
relations  with  his  immediate  superior  on  whom  his  future 
depended.  There  was  no  clash,  but  no  cordiahty;  the 
officer  never  "bawled  him  out,"  but  on  the  other  hand 
never  gave  him  a  word  or  a  sign  of  encouragement.  The 
officer's  attitude  was  impersonal,  distant,  coldly  superior, 
though  his  men  were  socially  and  mentally  his  equals  and 
far  ahead  of  him  in  knowledge  of  the  world. 

Mills  was  an  earnest  upholder  of  discipUne,  so  he  made 
no  outward  display  of  resentment ;  but  in  his  soul  he  chafed 
and  fretted  and  unquestionably  he  was  handicapped  in  his 
work  and  in  the  showing  that  he  made  in  tests  and  exami- 
nations. This  is  shown  in  his  letters  by  an  almost  morbid 
anxiety  as  to  whether  he  was  "making  good"  and  would 
receive  a  commission.  In  a  memorandum  on  this  phase  of 
his  camp  life,  his  mother  writes: 

In  my  notes  on  Quincy's  school  life,  I  mentioned  his  friction 
with  a  teacher  of  one  of  his  schools.  There  was  but  one  other 
instance  in  his  career  when  he  was  at  odds  with  anyone  placed 
in  authority  over  him.  This  was  at  the  Officers'  Training 
Camp  at  Plattsburg  in  1917.  The  officers  above  him  in  1915 
and  1 91 6  became  his  firm  friends.  But  his  commandant  in  the 
191 7  camp  was  unfortunately  uncongenial.     Quincy's  temper 


2i6  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

was  kept  on  edge.  He  went  through  his  work  with  scant 
hope  of  receiving  justice.  He  so  Httle  expected  at  one  time  to 
be  commissioned  that  he  was  making  arrangements  to  enter 
the  army  through  another  channel.  He  had,  however,  no 
intention  of  using  the  influence  of  highly  placed  friends  to 
secure  advancement  in  the  army.  His  realization  of  an 
officer's  responsibility  was  far  too  keen  to  permit  him  to  accept 
any  rank  not  deservedly  won  by  qualifying  himself  for  it. 

To  him  an  atmosphere  of  amenity  and  good  will  was  essential. 
He  could  not  put  forth  his  best  mental  efforts  where  the  air 
was  charged  with  irritation.  He  refused  a  fine  offer  from 
another  newspaper,  because  there  were  stories  afloat  as  to 
the  editor's  temper,  and  no  inducement  could  bring  him  to  risk 
contact  with  it.  The  kindly  companionship  of  The  Evening 
Sun  office  was  dear  to  him  and  he  was  stimulated  by  it  to 
produce  the  best  that  was  in  him.  The  suppressed  antagonism 
at  Plattsburg  seriously  hindered  him  in  doing  himself  justice. 

Whether  he  judged  correctly  his  commander's  true  in- 
ward attitude  toward  him  may  be  doubted.  He  came  to 
doubt  himself.  The  issue  is  raised  here  merely  to  throw 
some  Hght  on  the  strange  result  that  in  spite  of  his 
relatively  mature  years,  in  spite  of  his  unmistakable 
ability,  in  spite  of  his  devotion  to  the  cause,  he  received 
a  commission  only  as  Second  Lieutenant.  It  was  due, 
beyond  doubt,  in  some  degree  to  his  failure  to  show  himself 
at  his  full  value.  There  was  an  improvement  in  his 
status  after  a  visit  that  Mayor  Mitchel  made  to  the  camp. 
Of  this.  Mills  writes: 

I  had  quite  a  distinguished  caller  the  other  day  in  the  person 
of  Mayor  Mitchel.  He  came  in  to  see  me  especially  and  gave 
me  a  very  warm  personal  greeting  while  the  rest  of  Company  8 

stood  on  the  sidelines  and  got  an  earful — and  Lieutenant 

was  one  of  those  who  got  it.  He  was  so  impressed  that  he 
made  an  opportunity,  later  in  the  day,  to  talk  with  me  about 
the  Mayor.     Incidentally,  he  complimented  specifically  The 


Conscientious  Scruples  217 

Evening  Sun's  national  defence  and  universal  training  edito- 
rials of  the  past  and  appeared  considerably  impressed  when  he 
learned  that  I  had  written  them. 

I  appreciate  Mitchel's  personal  kindness  and  I  am  indebted 

to  him  for  furnishing  the  opportunity  to  show what  kind 

of  head  I  have.  But  in  this  regard  I  must  confess  to  a  feeling 
of  disgust  that  "pull "  was  necessary  to  put  me  in  a  position  of 
advantage.  It  is  true,  of  course,  that  I  got  the  pull  in  the 
first  place  by  establishing  myself  in  Mitchel's  respect  and  it 

may  be  that  the  Mitchel  boost  was  only  contributory  for 

said  to  one  of  my  friends  who  went  to  talk  to  him  over  his  own 
prospects  that  "there  are  going  to  be  lots  of  surprises  in 
Company  8.  .  .  .  A  lot  of  men  who  have  been  working  hard 
and  have  been  heard  from  seldom  are  going  to  be  surprised  by 
what  they  get." 

However,  the  harm  was  done  in  Mills's  case  and  hence 
the  great  surprise  that  came  to  his  friends — it  was  none  to 
him — in  the  inadequacy  of  the  grade  accorded  to  him.  He 
gradually  found  more  likable  qualities  in  his  commander 
and  judge,  and,  indeed,  that  officer  seems  to  have  slowly 
realized  the  faults  of  his  tone  and  displayed  somewhat 
more  sympathetic  qualities.  Mills,  while  liking  him  better, 
became  more  and  more  dismayed  by  the  insufficiency  of 
the  training  as  compared  with  the  coming  ordeal.  Toward 
the  close  of  the  encampment,  on  August  5  he  wrote; 
"The  more  I  consider  the  tremendous  responsibilities  to 
be  thrown  upon  the  men  who  leave  Plattsburg  and  their 
unpreparedness  to  meet  these  responsibilities,  the  more  my 
wonder  grows  as  to  how  this  country  is  to  measure  up  to 
the  gigantic  test  before  it." 

His  obsession  was  the  officer's  responsibility  for  the  lives 
of  his  men,  whether  in  camp  or  on  the  field  of  battle. 
He  wrote  of  it  again  and  again,  dwelling  on  the 
insufficiency  of  himself,  and  his  campmates.  He  spoke  on 
the  subject  to  his  mother  repeatedly.     It  reconciled  him 


2i8  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

to  the  idea  of  getting  only  a  Second  Lieutenancy  as  being 
something  within  the  scope  of  his  training. 

At  this  period,  however,  he  expected  a  First  Lieutenancy. 
He  would  be  glad,  he  said,  if  he  received  it,  but  adds :  "I 
must  say  frankly  that  it  will  not  be  with  any  pride  of 
position  and  self-conceit  that  I  will  put  on  the  uniform  but 
with  a  deep  sense  of  humility  and  a  consuming  desire  to 
prove  fit  to  play  the  part  assigned  me."  He  looked  to 
radical  changes  in  himself  from  the  new  duty.  "I  feel," 
he  said, ' '  a  strange  impersonal  sort  of  curiosity  to  see  what 
manner  of  man  I  shall  be  made  into  if  I  come  through. 
But  as  to  worrying  about  whether  I  shall  come  through,  it 
never  occurs  to  me  and  seems  a  matter  of  no  importance 
whatever  in  comparison  with  the  overwhelming  necessities 
of  this  world  transition  period." 

Every  man  in  the  camp  was  called  toward  the  end  before 
his  company  commander,  who  told  him  "to  weigh  the 
situation  and  himself,"  and  to  state  frankly  how  he  felt 
about  both.  This  was  Mills's  reply:  "Sir,  I  must  say 
frankly  that  after  being  here  more  than  two  months  I  am 
overwhelmed  by  the  sense  of  my  unfitness  for  a  com- 
mission, comparing  myself  with  trained  officers  like  your- 
self; but  when  I  look  at  the  other  men  about  me  I  feel  that 
I  am  no  more  unfit  than  they — am  not  as  unfit  as  some — 
and  I  therefore  am  still  an  applicant  for  a  commission. 
But  if  you  do  not  think  it  will  be  for  the  good  of  the 
service  for  me  to  have  one  I  do  not  want  it  and  I  will  take 
your  judgment  without  a  murmur.  That  is  the  basis  on 
which  commissions  should  be  allotted  and  I  believe  you  are 
trying  to  allot  them  in  that  way." 

To  this,  the  commanding  officer  replied:  "Mr.  Mills, 
the  way  you  feel  about  your  unfitness  is  a  sure  sign  that 
you  are  on  the  right  road.  It  is  an  inspiring  thing  to  me 
to  have  you  feel  as  you  do.  Every  man  in  the  company 
should  feel  that  way." 


Second  Lieutenant  219 

Mills  comments : 

It  was  mighty  fine  to  have  him  say  that  to  me.  Altogether, 
I  think  he  considers  my  possibilities  far  ahead  of  my  present 
performance,  although  when  he  called  me  out  to  drill  the 
company  last  week  I  drilled  it  without  making  a  single  blunder 
and  without  getting  a  "call,"  which  is  unusual.  I  was  told 
afterward  that  there  was  general  comment  on  the  soldierly 
way  I  handled  the  men  and  that  everyone  was  surprised  I  did 
so  well  because  I  was  so  unostentatious. 

On  August  10,  he  was  assured  privately  but  positively 
that  he  would  be  commissioned.  To  his  mother  he  wrote : 
"It  will  be  a  Second  Lieutenancy  or  a  grade  lower  than  I 
anticipated  but  I  have  no  kick  coming.  Indeed,  if  I  had 
been  passing  out  the  commissions  I  do  not  think  I  would 
have  given  myself  one. ' '  In  his  last  letter  from  the  camp, 
written  August  13,  he  furnished  what  is  probably  the 
true  or  at  least  the  principal  explanation  of  his  low  grading. 
He  wrote  again  to  his  mother : 

Your  congratulations  are  appreciated  but  I  do  not  agree 
with  your  estimate  of  my  military  proficiency.  I  am  not  good 
enough  for  a  captaincy,  but  I  would  have  liked  to  fill  out  a 
first  lieutenancy.  If  I  had  had  to  choose  on  my  own  account  I 
should  have  taken  the  latter  for  reasons  of  personal  pride  rather 
than  fitness  and  because  responsibility  for  the  lives  of  150  or 
more  men  is  not  to  be  taken  lightly.  I  rather  think  that  had 
not  some  six  designations  for  first  Lieutenancy  been  changed 
arbitrarily  for  this  company  at  Washington,  I  might  have  had 
that  rank.  The  change  was  made  in  order  to  put  six  regular 
army  sergeants  in  as  first  lieutenants.  The  commandant 
was  not  very  well  pleased  at  having  to  cut  down  his  men  to 
second  lieutenants  to  make  room  for  them.  Promotion  is 
likely  to  come  pretty  fast  for  men  who  have  the  goods,  how- 
ever; so  don't  be  disappointed. 

The  commission  was  delivered  to  Mills  on  August  15 
and  he  at  once  hurried  home.     There  he  stayed  for  more 


220  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

than  two  weeks,  enjoying  the  last  days  of  association  with 
his  parents.  He  had  become  engaged  to  a  young  lady, 
a  distant  cousin,  who  had  for  some  time  previously  been 
the  frequent  companion  of  his  theatre-going  and  of  his 
country  rambles.  The  difficult  question  of  marrying  or 
not  marrying  before  he  sailed  for  France  had  to  be  sifted 
down  and  settled.  It  was  Mills  who  decided  it  in  the 
negative,  despite  his  warmest  inclinations,  in  the  same 
spirit  of  self-effacement  and  care  for  the  fortunes  of  those 
he  loved  that  marked  his  entire  private  life.  Through 
this  time  of  relaxation  he  went  about,  seeing  his  friends 
and  completing  arrangements  for  his  departure  with  a 
wonderful  cheeriness  that  left  many  who  noted  it  sad  with 
instinctive  forboding  beneath  the  admiration  and  pride 
that  his  demeanor  inspired. 

He  had  become  a  Freemason  in  1907,  a  member  of  the 
Statesville  Lodge,  and  had  given  a  good  deal  of  study  to 
the  lore  of  the  order.  It  had  for  some  time  slipped  into 
the  background  of  his  life.  Now,  however,  on  the  eve  of 
sailing  for  Europe,  his  interest  was  re-awakened.  There 
was  a  great  Masonic  service  held,  consuming  a  whole  day, 
at  which  some  three  hundred  young  officers  were  raised  to 
the  Thirty-second  degree.  Quincy  was  of  the  nimiber  and 
thereafter  he  wore  a  massive  Masonic  ring  of  chiseled  gold 
which  was  found  on  his  body  and  sent  to  his  parents. 

On  September  i ,  he  was  ordered  to  Camp  Upton  and 
he  reported  there  the  same  afternoon.  The  next  day, 
Special  Order  No.  10  was  issued  from  the  Headquarters  of 
the  Twenty-seventh  Division,  transferring  a  long  list  of 
officers  to  Mineola  to  take  an  extended  course  in  field 
service.  Mills's  name  was  among  them  and  he  was  greatly 
pleased.  The  instruction  promised  to  be  most  interesting 
and  it  pointed  to  staff  or  other  advanced  class  of  duty  in 
France.  He  was  doomed  to  disappointment.  A  more 
urgent  need  developed  and  the  next  day,  September  3, 


Militia  Duty  221 

he  was  one  of  150  Plattsburg  graduates  ordered  for  duty  as 
' '  extra  officers  "  to  serve  with  National  Guard  regiments  at 
Camp  Mills.  All  those  so  designated  went  to  the  National 
Guard  unwillingly,  but  without  a  word  of  protest.  They 
had  hoped  to  drill  the  new  national  levies  that  were  then 
being  made  on  a  huge  scale.  They  believed  it  would  be 
easier  to  deal  with  the  raw  material  than  with  men  ac- 
customed to  militia  laxity  and  that  better  results  could  be 
attained.  They  expected  much  opposition,  too,  from  the 
guard  officers.  Fortunately  they  found  their  fears  un- 
realized in  both  respects. 

Mills's  first  assignment  was  to  serve  with  the  famous 
fighting  Sixty-ninth  Regiment  of  New  York  City,  mustered 
into  the  new  army  as  the  165th.  He  had  a  momentary 
hesitation  at  the  prospect,  not  from  race  prejudice — for 
some  years  one  of  his  nearest  friends  had  been  a  man  of 
Irish  birth — but  perhaps  because  of  some  fear  of  clash 
of  temperaments  over  his  very  strict  ideas  of  discipline. 
The  reluctance  vanished  speedily,  however,  for  on  Sep- 
tember 5,  he  wrote  with  regret  that  he  was  not  to  be  with 
this  regiment.  "Its  officers  and  men,"  he  said,  "have 
been  so  courteous  and  considerate  of  us,  I  would  gladly  be 
with  them  and  go  right  on  over  the  top  with  them  when- 
ever they  get  ready."  At  the  same  time  he  formed  the 
conviction  that  it  would  be  a  distinction  to  serve  in  the 
Rainbow  Division :  "It  will,  in  time,  grow  to  be  the  Honor 
Legion  of  the  army,"  he  wrote.  "Therefore  assignment 
to  it  appeals  to  me.  Anyway,  I  have  a  more  or  less 
fatalistic  attitude  toward  the  future." 

He  kept  on  enjoying  life — the  music  at  the  Garden  City 
Hotel;  "when  we  haven't  anything  to  do  we  can  look  at 
the  pretty  girls — and  be  looked  at  by  them."  But  when 
he  heard  one  of  them  scolding  a  fur  salesman  for  offering 
her  "common  and  cheap  wares,  at  $500  a  set,"  he  was 
tempted  to  tell  her  '  *  she  might  do  her  bit  by  making  out 


222  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

with  last  winter's  furs  and  donating  the  cost  of  this  year's 
to  war  work."  Counsels  of  prudence  prevailed,  however, 
and  he  remained  silent. 

His  assignment  was  not  made  until  September  1 6.  It 
was  to  the  i68th  Infantry,  an  organization  based  upon  the 
Third  National  Guard  Regiment  of  Iowa,  which  had  a 
fighting  record  in  the  Civil  War  and  had  served  as  the 
Fifty -first  Volunteers  in  the  War  with  Spain,  going  to 
Manila  and  fighting  seventeen  battles  in  the  Philippine 
campaign  before  being  sent  home  in  September,  1899. 
The  members  were  enthusiastic  citizen-soldiers.  They 
had  always  maintained  their  numbers  and  kept  up  their 
drill.  In  June,  1916,  they  were  mustered  into  the  Federal 
service  for  that  strange  Mexican  adventure  under  General 
Pershing.  Mustered  out  on  February  20,  191 7,  they  were 
recalled  to  active  service  on  July  15.  The  spirit  of 
Iowa  was  true  and  every  company  was  full  and  all  three 
regiments  of  the  State  Guard  had  long  lists  of  eager 
applicants  for  enlistment.  On  August  5,  the  Third 
was  formally  drafted  into  the  National  Army.  It  was 
assigned  to  the  Rainbow  Division  as  the  i68th.  On 
September  9,  under  Colonel  Ernest  R.  Bennett,  the 
regiment  started  east,  a  vast  crowd  of  friends  gathering  to 
cheer  the  men  and  wish  them  good  luck.  On  the  13th, 
Camp  Mills  was  reached  and  there  the  extra  officers  from 
Plattsburg  and  other  training  camps  were  sent  to  introduce 
the  leaven  of  regular  army  discipline  and  up-to-date 
combat  tactics. 

Mills  wrote  his  first  impressions  of  the  organization  to 
his  mother.  The  home  officers,  he  found  plain,  "square- 
headed"  types.  The  enlisted  men  were  "about  eighty 
per  cent  farm  products,  big  and  rawboned  and  also  raw 
as  far  as  military  standards  go,  but  with  the  makings  of  a 
bunch  of  'bad  scrappers'  in  them."  He  goes  on:  "I 
have  been  cordially  received,  well  fed  and  have  no  kick. 


Drilling  the  lowans  223 

In  fact  I  like  it.  .  .  .  Well,  what  do  you  think  of  me,  a 
pen  pusher,  going  to  war  with  a  crowd  of  hay  pitchers? 
The  last  thing  you  look  for  is  always  the  one  to  expect." 
He  found  many  old  friends  among  the  Plattsburg  officers, 
Lieutenant  Rubel,  whom  he  praises  as  an  expert  signal 
officer  and  who  was  to  die  at  almost  the  same  moment  as 
himself,  his  Masonic  friend,  Lieutenant  L.  M.  Campbell 
Adams,  and  others.  Many  new  friends  were  made,  among 
them  Lieutenant  Pearsall,  who  later  came  to  command 
Company  G,  with  which  Mills  served  until  his  death.  The 
first  commander  was  Captain  Steller,  who  was  wounded  in 
France  and  shifted  to  the  Service  of  Supply.  Mills's 
tent  mate  was  Lieutenant,  afterwards  Captain,  Younkin. 

The  men  had  a  few  days '  rest  and  then  serious  work  was 
begun.  Mills  had  a  squad  of  fifty  to  drill.  He  enjoyed 
the  work  hugely.  He  soon  made  the  reputation  of  being 
one  of  the  best  equipped  of  the  "extra"  officers  attached 
to  the  regiment.  His  knowledge  of  the  infantry  drill  and 
regulations  was  especially  accurate  and  it  became  quite 
the  rule  for  ' '  sheepish  corporals  "  to  come  to  him  in  strings, 
admitting  their  blunders  and  the  justness  of  his  criticisms. 
"This,"  he  remarks  in  passing,  "is  a  mighty  good  thing." 
He  found,  besides,  that  he  developed  more  in  a  week  of  this 
independent  work  than  he  had  in  the  months  of  repression 
at  Plattsburg.  Some  of  the  officers  who  had  known  him 
there  expressed  astonishment  at  his  new  efficiency  and 
told  him  that  if  he  had  let  himself  go  in  the  same  way  at 
the  training  camp  he  would  have  "pulled  down"  a  cap- 
tain's commission.  The  difference  was  all  in  the  atmos- 
phere and  in  Mills's  temperament. 

The  routine  was  varied  by  reviews  for  high  army  officers 
and  for  magnates  from  the  home  State,  the  Governor  of 
Iowa,  the  United  States  Senators  and  others.  Mills,  in 
addition,  was  constantly  meeting  North  Carolinians — the 
doctor  who  put  him  through  his  final  physical  examination, 


224  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

for  instance,  was  a  contemporary  of  his  at  the  University — 
and  this  always  gave  a  momentary  spice  to  Hfe.  The 
serious  worries,  on  the  other  hand,  were  the  indescribable 
backwardness  of  equipment,  the  blunders  of  the  supply 
system  and  the  absolute  rottenness  of  the  mails.  He 
was  also  "more  and  more  disgruntled  with  the  discipline." 
He  wanted  "to  see  the  screws  put  down,  good  and  proper, 
with  all  the  officers  as  well  as  the  soldiers  turned  out  for 
reveille."  One  result  of  this  was  that  he  was  probably 
more  popular  for  a  time  with  the  officers  outside  his  com- 
pany than  in  it.  He  saw  signs  of  certain  ones  finding  it 
uncomfortable  to  have  their  junior  know  more  than  they 
did.  Yet,  there  was  no  small  fear  lest  the  extra  officers 
should  be  withdrawn  when  the  regiment  was  sent  abroad. 
Mills  was  a  man  to  be  relied  on  and  so  were  other  extras. 

About  October  8,  there  were  signs  of  a  move.  "Some 
of  our  roots  are  being  pulled  up,"  wrote  Mills.  Major 
Stanley  in  command  of  his  battalion,  the  Second,  asked 
him  what  he  would  do  if  the  choice  were  given  him  of 
going  over  with  the  i68th  or  being  transferred  to  one  of 
the  new  regiments  then  being  organized.  He  said  he 
found  himself  so  pleasantly  situated  that  he  would  hesitate 
to  change.  As  for  discipline,  he  trusted  to  new  conditions 
in  France.  He  was  eager  to  go  over — ' '  I  hate  to  have  you 
worried  about  me  so  soon,  but  that  is  all."  It  was  soon 
decided  that  he  was  to  go.  Then  he  spent  a  day  arranging 
his  baggage  and  painting  his  name  on  his  trunks.  When 
the  paint  dried  he  would  be  ready  to  sail  on  five  minutes' 
notice. 

The  start — it  was  a  false  start — came  on  Thursday, 
October  i8.  That  morning  Mills  wrote  to  his  mother: 
' '  You  are  certainly  a  brave  woman  and  you  must  continue 
to  be  so,  for  it  would  not  be  worthy  of  you  to  be 
otherwise." 

This  letter  was  postmarked  at  Hempstead  at  i  :30  p.m. 


German  Treachery  225 

Later  in  the  afternoon  the  regiment  entrained  and  was 
taken  toHoboken,  where  the  entire  Eighty -fourth  Brigade, 
mustering  5500  men,  was  loaded  on  the  President  Grant 
as  she  lay  at  her  pier.  The  vessel  formerly  was  of  the 
Hamburg- American  Steamship  Company  fleet.  She  had 
been  taken  over  by  the  United  States  at  the  opening  of  the 
war.  All  her  fittings  as  an  ocean  liner  had  been  torn  out 
and  she  had  been  re-partitioned  and  equipped  as  a  trans- 
port for  "capacity"  service.  That  capacity  was  now 
strained  to  the  limit ;  the  vessel  was  desperately  crowded. 
The  men  were  packed  like  sardines ;  the  officers  had  worse 
accommodation  than  enlisted  men  on  other  vessels.  An 
oddity  of  the  voyage  was  that  the  officers  had  to  do  look- 
out duty  in  the  "crow's  nest"  although  some  of  them, 
lifelong  landsmen,  were  incapacitated  by  seasickness.  Mills 
however  did  not  suffer  from  this  malady  and  took  his  turn 
aloft  while  the  reserve  naval  officers  paced  the  deck. 

The  sun  was  going  down  behind  the  heights  beyond  the 
New  Jersey  shore  as  the  Second  Battalion  filed  on  board. 
All  the  evening  was  taken  up  with  getting  the  men  into 
their  quarters  and  some  sort  of  order  established.  The 
ship  stole  out  of  the  harbor  in  the  darkness  of  eleven 
o'clock  and  joined  her  convoy  ofE  Sandy  Hook.  The 
voyage  began  fairly.  For  a  day  or  so  all  went  well.  Then 
trouble  began.  The  President  Grant  could  not  keep  up 
with  the  other  vessels  of  the  flotilla.  There  was  something 
the  matter  with  her  boilers. 

This  is  an  affair  which  has  never  been  publicly  explained. 
It  would  appear  that  before  the  vessel  was  seized  by  the 
Government,  she  had  been  wilfully  damaged  by  her  Ger- 
man crew.  She  must  have  been  carelessly  inspected  when 
put  into  active  service  for  carrying  troops.  Whatever  the 
reasons,  she  could  develop  no  speed.  She  was  first  an 
impediment  and  then  a  danger  to  the  convoy. 

As  to  the  conditions  on  board  and  Mills's  experiences, 


226  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

they  are  fully  described  in  the  only  letter  which  he  wrote 
home  while  he  was  on  board : 

On  Board  U.  S.  S.  S. 


Somewhere  on  the  Atlantic, 

Sunday,  Oct.  21,  191 7. 

Dearest  Mother: — I  thought  when  I  came  on  board  that 
I  would  write  you  a  sort  of  continued-in-our-next  epistle  from 
day  to  day,  but  somehow  there  has  been  no  time  for  anything. 
The  very  fact  of  having  several  thousand  men  on  board  who 
have  never  even  seen  a  big  ship  before,  all  crowded  together, 
would  be  job  enough  even  if  you  did  not  have  to  concern 
yourself  with  their  future  safety — and  your  own.  There  has 
been  something  to  occupy  every  minute  of  the  time  in  order 
to  take  care  of  the  safety  consideration.  Teaching  the  men 
how  to  find  their  way  from  the  crowded  holds  to  the  lifeboats 
and  rafts  to  which  they  have  been  assigned  is  an  undertaking 
of  the  hardest  sort.  The  below  deck  passageways  form  a 
veritable  labyrinth,  and  unless  the  men  are  taught  just  which 
corners  to  turn  there  is  sure  to  be  a  jam  when  the  alarm  is 
sounded — and  when  it  is  sounded  in  real  earnest,  if  it  ever  is, 
great  loss  of  life.  Consequently,  the  alarm  gong  sounds  so 
frequently  that  you  haven't  time  to  do  much  but  obey  it. 

The  men  are  drilled  and  drilled  and  drilled  in  what  they  must 
do  in  case  of  emergency,  the  idea  being  to  get  them  so  they  can 
do  it  in  the  dark — as  they  might  be  called  upon  to  do — and 
get  to  their  proper  stations  in  prompt  and  orderly  fashion 
without  panic.  A  favorite  stunt  is  to  sound  the  alarm  while 
we  are  at  mess,  and  bring  us  tearing  out,  leaving  our  dessert 
and  coffee.  And,  truth  to  tell,  I  have  a  notion  they  do  it  on 
purpose,  for  the  food  is  so  good  you  can  hardly  bear  to  leave  it 
unless  you  are  literally  hauled  away  from  the  table  by  the  nape 
of  your  neck. 

You  are  so  interested  in  the  food  question  that  I  know  you 
will  love  to  have  a  sample  menu : 

For  breakfast  we  have  something  like  this :  Fruit  (grapefruit 
usually);  cereal   (oatmeal,   cornflakes  or  cream  of  wheat); 


Safety  First  227 

omelette  and  bacon;  bread  and  muffins,  with  real  butter  of 
the  finest  sort,  and  coffee. 

For  lunch:  Cold  meat  loaf  or  sliced  meat;  salad  (lettuce  or 
some  other  green  stuff) ;  dessert  (two  or  three  kinds  of  cake  and 
canned  pears,  for  instance)  and  coffee. 

For  dinner:  Soup;  roast  chicken  or  beef;  two  vegetables; 
salad ;  dessert  (pie  or  ice  cream) ;  cheese  and  crackers  and  coffee. 

All  the  food  comes  right  up  to  the  traditional  high  mark  set 
for  steamships,  and  the  coffee  surpasses  even  that.  It  is  the  best 
I  ever  drank,  and  I  consume  endless  cups  of  it.  I  tried  to  find 
out  for  you  just  what  sort  of  coffee  it  is,  but  the  best  I  could  do 
was  to  learn  that  it  was  the  regular  navy  issue,  and  made  by 
the  percolator  process  in  big  French  restaurant  urns. 

The  men  fare  as  well  as  we  do,  their  mainstay  of  diet  being 
the  traditional  army-navy  bean  which  I  had  thought  to  be  a 
lost  delicacy  because  it  was  too  expensive  for  our  table  at 
Plattsburg.  Nothing  is  too  good  for  us  here,  and  that  suits  us 
toaT. 

Altogether,  we  have  been  mighty  lucky  thus  far,  for  the 
weather  has  been  as  mild  almost  as  summer,  and  the  sea,  with 
the  exception  of  yesterday,  as  smooth  as  a  hardwood  floor.  The 
calm  has  been  a  double  blessing,  for  not  only  has  it  relieved 
the  men  from  much  suffering  in  the  way  of  seasickness,  but  it 
has  enabled  them  to  become  famihar  with  the  "abandon-ship" 
drill.  Had  they  been  sick  in  large  numbers — as  they  are  likely 
to  be  yet — it  would  have  been  impossible  to  instruct  them  in 
this  most  essential  business.  We  count  on  continuing  to  be 
lucky,  for  we  had  target  practice  to-day,  and  the  very  first 
shot  fired  was  a  dead  hit  that  would  have  ripped  the  entrails 
out  of  friend  U-boat  had  it  been  there.  You  ought  to  have 
heard  the  cheer  that  went  up  when  the  shot  raised  a  spume 
many  feet  high  right  at  the  sham  periscope  that  was  being 
trailed  by  another  one  of  the  vessels  in  the  convoy. 

We  carry  four  5 -inch  guns,  and  they  certainly  are  fine 
shooting  irons.  I  like  to  hear  their  sharp  concussion  and  the 
boring  noise  that  the  projectiles  make  as  they  streak  through 
the  air  toward  their  mark.  As  to  the  size  of  the  convoy,  I  can 
say  nothing  except  that  there  are  enough  of  us  to  keep  any- 


228  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

body  from  getting  lonesome,  and  that  there  are  sufficient 
warships  to  keep  anyone  from  feeling  any  apprehension  about 
submarines.  As  to  what  ship  I  am  on  I  can  say  nothing  more 
definite  than  that  there  is  a  whole  lot  of  satisfaction  in  going 
over  in  a  vessel  built  in  a  German  shipyard  and  formerly 
owned  and  operated  by  a  German  company. 

I  am  writing  this  letter  on  the  chance  that  it  may  be  given  to 
a  passing  vessel  for  early  transportation  back  home.  Therefore 
it  may  reach  you  before  I  get  over ;  if  not  it  will  be  delivered 
with  others  which  I  will  mail  at  once  on  reaching  the  other 
side. 

With  much  love  for  Dad  and  yourself. 

QUINCY. 

The  danger  reached  its  climax  on  Monday  the  22d. 
The  convoy  had  made  only  880  miles  as  the  other  vessels 
constantly  slowed  down  to  enable  the  President  Grant  to 
keep  up  with  them.  It  was  hoped  that  her  injuries  could 
be  repaired  by  her  engineers.  But,  instead,  the  conditions 
became  worse  and  worse;  she  lost  instead  of  gaining  speed. 
The  zone  of  submarine  operations  would  soon  be  reached 
and  then  speed  would  be  the  vital  factor  of  safety.  There 
was  only  one  thing  to  do;  the  President  Grant  must  turn 
back  and  allow  the  other  vessels  to  pursue  their  way. 
One  evening,  Mills  and  his  comrades  going  on  deck  after 
dinner  found  the  moon  shining  on  the  wrong  side  of  the 
ship ;  they  were  on  their  way  back  to  New  York.  They 
dropped  anchor  in  the  Bay  on  the  27th ;  it  had  taken  them 
five  days  to  return  over  the  distance  that  they  had  made  in 
three  going  out !  To  complete  the  story  of  the  President 
Grant,  she  was  sent  to  the  Brooklyn  Navy  Yard  for  repairs, 
was  laid  up  for  several  weeks,  then  resumed  navigation  as  a 
transport  and  served  until  the  close  of  the  war. 

Of  the  1 68th,  the  First  and  Third  battalions  were  sent 
back  to  Camp  Mills.  The  Second  under  Major  Claude 
M.  Stanley  landed  on  Governor's  Island  and  was  cantoned 


Last  Days  at  Home  229 

there  for  nearly  a  month  before  its  final  departure  for 
Europe.  Mills  made  many  visits  to  the  city  and  spent 
many  pleasant  hours  with  his  fiancee,  his  family  and  his 
friends.  Many  of  the  latter  visited  him  in  his  quarters. 
It  was  a  period,  on  the  whole,  of  tranquil  enjoyment, 
strangely  tinged  with  uneasiness  and  uncertainty. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

A  Cheerful  Voyage  toward  the  Unknown — Soul  of  an  American 
Crusader — Wartime  Types  on  an  Atlantic  Liner — In  a  British 
Rest  Camp. 

Mills  saw  his  parents,  his  fiancee  and  some  of  his 
nearest  friends  for  the  last  time  on  November  22,  191 7. 
He  spent  the  evening  at  his  parents'  home  on  Washington 
Heights,  New  York.  The  next  day,  the  23d,  his  battaHon 
and  the  machine  gun  company  of  the  i68th  sailed  for 
Europe  on  the  steamship  Baltic  of  the  White  Star  line. 
Before  leaving  Governor's  Island  he  wrote  a  short  letter 
to  his  mother,  in  which  he  said: 

That  bed  roll  of  mine  will  be  like  Santa's  pack  or  Swiss 
Family  Robinson's  ship.  I'll  get  everything  out  of  it  from 
cigarettes  to  cook  stoves.     I  haven't  any  idea  what  all  is  in  it. 

My  friend  whom  I  was  to  chase  out  of  camp  is  sticking  right 
along  with  me  to-day,  so  maybe  we  are  to  have  a  new  mascot 
in  the  place  of  the  little  dog  that  started  over  with  us  before  on 
the  Grant.     Maybe  the  little  fellow  was  the  jinx. 

Got  a  good  night's  sleep,  and  am  feeling  fine.  Do  not 
worry  about  Mr.  Vierick's  Fatherland,  for  it  has  been  sup- 
pressed, and  we  will  not  get  even  a  glimpse  of  it.  I  mean  just 
that,  literally:  We  will  not  see  it.  So  don't  worry.  Lots  of 
love  for  Dad,  yourself  and  the  cats. 

He  wrote  a  second  note  on  the  same  evening,  apparently 
after  he  went  on  board  the  ship : 

Dear  Mother: — I  forgot  to  thank  you  last  night  for  the 
sweater  and   wristlets,    but   you   know   I   appreciate  them. 

230 


Safe  on  the  Other  Side  231 

How  many  wristlets  you  made!  They  will  comfort  lots  of 
fellows. 

"My  friend,"  the  dog,  was  separated  from  us  by  a  harsh 
order  forbidding  mascots,  but  we  have  a  monkey  who  wears  a 
gray  sweater,  and  is  as  sleek  as  Sweet,  to  entertain  us. 

I  certainly  am  comfortably  fixed.  Hope  you  and  Dad  con- 
tinue well,  and  that  you  will  both  be  sensible  and  refrain  from 
worrying  about  me — I  assure  you  there  is  no  occasion  for 
worry. 

Much  love.  QuiNCY. 

At  the  same  time  he  wrote  another  note  which  was 
addressed  to  his  parents  but  was  placed  in  charge  of  the 
War  Department  to  be  forwarded  to  them  as  soon  as  the 
Baltic's  safe  arrival  was  cabled  over.  This  was  the 
regular  practice  in  order  to  give  the  earliest  news  to 
relatives  without  putting  into  circulation  any  dangerous 
information  as  to  the  movement  of  troops.  Mills's  note 
read  thus : 

On  Board  S.  S.  Baltic,  November  23,  191 7. 

Dear  Mother: — This  line  will  let  you  know  that  we 
have  arrived  safely  somewhere  on  the  other  side. 

You  will  be  overjoyed  to  learn,  I  know,  that  we  are  on 
a  ship  this  time  which  is  manned  by  experienced  salts. 
Even  the  cabin  boys  are  hardened  sailors — to  let  them  tell 
it.  This  ship  is  far  superior  in  accommodations  to  the 
Grant,  and  I  am  sure  that  the  voyage  W\\\  be  as  comfort- 
able as  well  as  safe  as  possible.     Much  love.     Quincy. 

The  voyage  was  over,  of  course,  when  the  note  was 
delivered,  but  the  word  as  to  its  comfort  enhanced  the 
pleasure  caused  by  its  safe  ending. 

Quincy  Sharpe  Mills  was  now  thirty -four  years  old,  less 
two  months.  His  character  was  mature ;  his  performance 
was  considerable ;  his  promise  very  large.    His  nature  was  a 


232  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

singular  and  happy  compound  of  serious  aim  and  view 
with  gayety  and  enjoyment  of  Hfe.  He  was  so  much  of  a 
materiaHst  as  wisely  to  extract  from  the  passing  days,  from 
various  experiences,  all  the  pleasure  that  they  could  be 
made  afford;  but  the  very  enterprise  upon  which  he  was 
launched  demonstrated  how  much  his  spirituality  domi- 
nated all  earthy  values  and  impulses  in  his  soul.  When 
truth,  honor,  manhood,  patriotism,  were  in  the  balance,  no 
consideration  of  personal  safety,  no  selfish  interest,  not 
even  the  feelings  of  those  whom  he  held  dearer  than  him- 
self, could  shake  his  resolution  or  turn  him  from  his  chosen 
path  of  duty. 

Mills  had  no  expectation  of  returning  from  the  war 
alive.  He  seems  to  have  had  a  premonition  of  his  end. 
He  told  his  father  not  to  expect  his  return.  He  spoke 
to  friends  in  the  office  of  The  Evening  Sun  of  his  fate  as  a 
matter  of  very  great  probability.  The  accounts  of  his 
talk  given  by  his  comrades  in  the  i68th  all  bear  out  this 
view.  He  constantly  expected  death.  He  was  almost 
surprised  when  after  each  action  he  came  out  unharmed. 
His  intimates  marvelled  and  made  something  of  a  jest  of 
his  expectancy — in  war,  even  death  becomes  a  semi- 
humorous  phenomenon. 

But  he  was  never  afraid,  nor  reluctant,  nor  hesitant 
in  any  way;  nor  did  he  desire  death,  nor  did  he  become 
in  any  sense  morbid  on  the  subject.  His  cheerfulness  was 
remarkable.  He  was  always  either  placid  or  in  high 
spirits.  The  shadow  which  he  felt  in  no  way  darkened  his 
days.  The  fatalistic  attitude  which  he  spoke  of  in  the 
letter  from  Camp  Mills,  quoted  in  the  preceding  chapter, 
perhaps,  explains  best  his  state  of  mind. 

In  stature  he  was  of  medium  height  or  slightly  below 
it,  slenderly  built,  but  with  well-hardened  muscles  and 
healthy  organs  which  gave  him  activity  and  high  en- 
durance.    His  face  was  oval  with  well-marked  features. 


An  Ideal  Champion  233 

His  eyes  had  an  unusually  luminous  quality  which  al- 
ways gave  character  and  interest  to  his  expression;  in 
mirth,  they  lit  up  with  an  irresistibly  infectious  sparkle. 
As  a  civilian,  he  wore  his  hair  rather  longer  than  is  usual 
among  young  New  Yorkers;  it  had  a  natural  wave  and 
contributed  to  give  him  a  somewhat  poetic  or  artistic  guise. 
When  he  donned  the  army  uniform  he  had  it  trimmed 
short  and  wore  it  in  the  so-called  "Pompadour"  fashion, 
brushed  straight  up  from  his  forehead.  The  new  style 
suited  him  wonderfully  well.  It  imparted  a  peculiarly 
alert  and  clean-cut  aspect,  always  mellowed  and  animated 
by  the  slumbering  fire  in  his  eyes.  He  was  as  fine  a  sample 
of  young  manhood,  as  handsome  a  champion  of  light  as 
even  romance  could  consecrate  to  an  ideal. 

The  mind  and  spirit  within  were  worthy  of  the  con- 
taining form.  He  has  been  shown  as  a  lifelong  student  of 
principles  and  contender  for  high  things — for  political 
purity  in  peace  and  patriotic  devotion  in  war.  In  his 
inward  self  he  was  a  lover  of  poetry,  a  seeker  for 
philosophic  truth,  a  devotee  of  music.  He  was  saturated 
with  family  affection;  he  had  the  qualities  of  an  ardent 
lover;  he  was  a  sincere  friend;  he  was  an  aggressive  foe 
but  only  on  the  merits  of  an  issue  joined ;  he  was  an  enter- 
taining companion;  as  a  worker,  he  was  untiring  and 
effective.  His  wide  range  of  interests,  his  quick  mind  and 
ready  gift  of  words  made  his  conversation  uncommonly 
agreeable.  He  was  fond  of  little  children  and  easily  made 
friends  with  them.  He  was  an  intense  admirer  of  nature 
in  all  its  aspects  and  he  had  a  natural  sympathy  with  the 
lower  animals;  his  quaint  addiction  to  cats  has  already 
been  revealed.  He  often  had  a  pocketful  of  sugar  to  give 
to  horses  in  the  street. 

He  had  strong  will  power  and  much  command  over  his 
own  inclinations.  Though  not  a  total  abstainer  on  prin- 
ciple, he  gave  up  the  use  of  liquor  for  long  periods.     He  did 


234  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

that  much  more  difficult  thing  of  using  it  occasionally  while 
generally  refraining.  It  has  been  seen  how  he  gave  up 
smoking  for  a  period  as  a  health  measure.  In  early  life  he 
was  so  fond  of  cards  that  his  mother  and  grandmother 
feared  a  gambling  instinct,  but  no  such  thing  ever 
developed.  The  attraction  to  him  was  in  the  mental 
exercise  and  this  presently  drew  him  to  chess  playing,  in 
which  he  acquired  fair  skill. 

For  his  years  and  considering  the  time  and  effort  he  had 
given  to  an  arduous  calling,  he  had  done  a  large  amount  of 
reading  and  study.  Browning  was  his  favorite  poet,  but 
he  also  reveled  in  the  works  of  Kipling,  Wordsworth, 
Keats  and  Byron.  In  college,  he  wrote  a  critical  and 
biographical  essay  on  Poe.  Of  the  very  modern  verse 
makers,  Masefield  was  his  favorite.  His  copy  of  Brown- 
ing is  extensively  marked ;  Childe  Roland  to  the  Dark  Tower 
Came  was  his  favorite  poem,  but  Evelyn  Hope  with  its 
suggestion  of  a  long  future  of  effort  and  reward  also 
appealed  to  his  temperament.  One  line  of  The  Pope  is 
specially  underscored  in  his  much  scored  copy : 

And  makes  the  stumbling  block  the  stepping  stone. 

In  the  margin,  Mills  has  written:  "Almost  the  whole 
philosophy  of  Browning  summed  up  in  this  line."  It  was 
largely  Mills's  own  philosophy  too. 

Among  the  early  prose  works  that  influenced  him, 
Wundt's  Principles  oj  Morality  has  been  mentioned.  One 
passage,  on  page  210  of  his  edition,  is  doubly  marked  for 
reference.  It  has  a  bearing  on  his  fate,  so  marked  that  it 
must  be  quoted  in  part  as  giving  a  clue  to  his  state 
of  mind : 

There  is  but  one  civic  duty  that  possesses  in  the  highest 
degree  the  property  of  arousing,  by  the  kind  of  activity  it 
requires,  sentiments  of  self-sacrifice  that  are  strong  enough 
to  restrain  the  opposite  inclinations.  .  .  .     This  is  the  duty 


The  Great  End  235 

of  military  service  for  one's  country,  and  it  involves  one  of  the 
greatest  of  political  rights,  that  of  protecting  the  State  and  of 
using  force  as  a  necessary  means  to  this  end,  a  means  forbidden 
to  the  peaceful  citizen. 

Plato's  Republic  influenced  his  political  ideals  in  a 
marked  degree  and  Victor  Hugo's  Intellectual  Auto- 
biography colored  all  his  thought.  The  dictum  ' '  Man  has 
need  of  dreams,"  underscored  in  his  copy,  is  suggestive  of 
his  own  internal  consciousness.  Again  this  line,  "In  the 
end,  the  tomb  is  always  in  the  right,"  fits  in  with  the  mood 
in  which  he  went  to  France,  as  again  does  this  vital  query : 
"What  is  death  for  man?  Is  it  truly  the  end  of  some- 
thing? Is  it  the  end  of  all?"  Also  this  word  of  hope: 
' '  At  death  man  ends,  the  soul  begins ! "  Of  such  questions 
and  such  hopes  was  Mills's  soul  compounded.  In  the 
last  two  years  or  so  of  his  life  he  fell  under  the  spell  of 
Montaigne,  who  became  his  constant  intellectual  compan- 
ion. He  dipped  into  the  essays  every  night  at  bedtime  as 
other  men  might  into  the  Bible.  Here  again  the  dis- 
cussion of  death  and  the  great  mystery  fascinated  him,  as 
in  Chapter  XVIII,  the  story  of  Croesus  and  his  theory  of 
happiness  and  in  XIX  the  quotations  from  Cicero:  "To 
study  philosophy  is  nothing  but  to  prepare  ourselves  to 
die,"  and  "All  the  wisdom  and  reasoning  in  the  world  do  in 
the  end  conclude  in  this  point,  to  teach  us  not  to  fear  to  die." 

Mills  took  but  three  books  to  France  with  him,  Mon- 
taigne, the  Rubaiyat  and  Kipling's  poems.  When  his 
trunks  were  returned,  they  contained  also  a  copy  of 
Marcus  Aurelius,  which  he  must  have  bought  over  there. 
He  wrote  home  in  April  or  May,  191 8,  asking  his  mother 
to  make  a  copy  of  Childe  Roland  for  him.  She  had  a 
typewritten  one  made  and  sent  it  to  him. 

Of  Mills's  own  thoughts  on  life  and  death  there  is  slight 
record  outside  his  letters.     In  his  diary  for  191 1,  on  Janu- 


236  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

ary  2,  after  seeing  the  play,  Old  Heidleherg,  he  wrote: 
"The  only  one  that  has  brought  tears  to  my  eyes.  The 
effect  was  not  due  so  much  to  the  power  of  the  play  as  to 
the  vividness  with  which  it  illustrated  the  transitory 
nature  of  things  in  life."  Besides  the  diaries,  there  is  a 
rough  notebook  with  pages  of  books  to  be  read,  topics  for 
articles,  words  and  things  to  look  up,  quotations  of  strong 
suggestion  and  the  like.  It  contains  some  apothegms 
apparently  his  own.  The  very  first  is  light:  "Why 
should  I  not  steal  a  kiss?  (playful  note);"  but  this  is 
grave  enough :  ' '  Do  not  ask  for  genius  but  for  power  and 
strength  to  work  hard — to  bear  the  brunt  and  smile." 

He  was  not  addicted  to  the  ordinary  curiosities  regard- 
ing things  mechanical;  he  rather  took  them  for  granted. 
An  entry  in  his  diary,  however,  made  October  29,  19 10, 
shows  a  lively  interest  in  aviation.  It  reads:  "Saw 
aeroplanes  in  flight  at  Belmont  Park ;  my  first  look  at  them 
and  I  want  to  try  it.  There  is  something  that  grips  you  in 
the  roar  of  the  engines  overhead."  It  would  seem  the  call 
was  to  his  imagination  rather  than  to  any  material  instinct. 
In  all  the  spiritual  and  temperamental  phases  of  life, 
however,  his  visions  and  desires  were  warm  and  vivid. 
These  were  crowned  with  the  hope  of  love  and  domesticity, 
to  which  allusion  has  already  been  made,  but  which  is  too 
delicate  a  matter  for  more  than  indication  here  as  a 
supreme  factor  in  that  sacrifice  which  was  his  departure 
for  the  unknown,  the  fatal,  the  humanly  final,  with  his 
regiment  on  the  Baltic. 

From  the  first  he  made  a  strong  impression  of  ability 
and  will  power  upon  his  brother  officers  of  all  ranks.  This 
was  soon  supplemented  by  cordial  liking  and  in  several 
cases  by  close  friendship.  His  spirit  of  fair  play  was 
recognized ;  his  entertaining  talk  and  wide  fund  of  infor- 
mation caused  his  companionship  to  be  sought.  "He  was  a 
good  man  to  be  with  when  we  struck  a  new  place,"  said 


War  Letters  237 

one  of  them  later;  "he  always  knew  something  interesting 
about  it . "  His  cheerfulness  was  inspiring  to  his  comrades 
and  his  men.  Only  the  imperfect  equipment  of  the  troops 
in  the  early  part  of  the  campaign  caused  him  any  anxiety. 
This  he  viewed  with  a  critical  bitterness  which  was  as 
much  editorial  as  military.  Altogether,  he  was  successful 
as  an  army  officer — active,  vigilant,  strict,  well  informed 
and  well  drilled,  obedient  and  enforcing  obedience,  con- 
siderate, genial.  He  was  popular  as  well  as  efficient — 
rather  because  he  was  efficient. 

The  second  voyage,  the  real  journey  to  Europe  and  the 
battle  area,  was  far  different  from  the  first.  The  Baltic 
was  a  passenger  ship  and  the  private  soldiers  of  Mills's 
battalion,  as  he  wrote  to  a  friend,  enjoyed  better  quarters 
on  her  than  the  officers  had  had  on  the  President  Grant. 
But  at  this  point  he  begins  to  tell  his  own  story  in  his 
own  way. 

The  remainder  of  this  book  will  consist  principally  of 
narrative  of  his  experiences  and  observations  in  the 
campaign  of  19 17-18.  It  is  found  in  the  series  of  letters 
which  he  wrote  to  his  father  and  mother  dowTi  to  the  eve  of 
his  death.  Writing  them  seems  to  have  been  his  princi- 
pal recreation.  They  exhibit  his  remarkable  gift  for 
journalism,  indeed  for  literature — he  would  have  been  a 
star  as  a  war  correspondent.  One  novel  quality  they  have 
in  particular:  they  give  the  personal  side  of  the  soldier's 
life,  the  phase  the  makers  of  books  generally  miss.  Un- 
consciously, they  are  a  wonderful  tribute  to  the  courage 
and  moral  tone  of  the  American  troops,  including  their 
portrayer  himself.  It  must  be  generally  understood  that 
these  letters  were  full  of  personal  mention.  All  sorts  of 
intimate  things  were  discussed,  intensely  interesting  to 
him,  his  family  and  his  immediate  circle,  and  showing  that 
his  heart  was  always  at  home,  always  with  those  he  loved 


238  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

and  liked,  and  that  his  appreciation  of  any  kindness  was  as 
keen  and  simple  as  a  child's.  These  have  been  omitted 
for  reasons  that  every  reader  will  easily  conceive.  Some 
bitter  comments  there  were  also  on  acquaintances  who  did 
not  live  up  to  his  ideal  of  them  or  of  their  duty.  These, 
too,  have  generally  been  expunged,  though  one  or  two  are 
left  in  order  that  his  state  of  mind  may  be  made  clear. 
In  these  latter  cases,  the  identity  of  the  objects  of  his  cen- 
sure is  suppressed. 

With  the  exceptions  thus  noted,  the  letters  are  given 
exactly  as  he  wrote  them;  the  editing  of  them  has  been 
confined  to  rare  verbal  corrections  such  as  he  would  have 
made  himself  had  there  been  leisure  to  read  them  be- 
fore mailing.  In  accordance  with  the  War  Department 
regulations,  no  indication  was  given  in  any  of  the  exact 
place  from  which  it  was  sent.  The  two  which  follow 
were  written  at  sea,  on  the  way  over.  Names  of  places 
which  Mills  was  obliged  to  leave  blank  in  these  as  well  as 
in  following  letters  have  been  supplied  in  brackets.  The 
first  letter  was  not  dated;  some  opportunity,  apparently, 
was  found  to  send  it  home,  en  route.  The  second  was 
mailed  immediately  upon  the  arrival  of  the  Baltic  in  port 
on  the  other  side : 

Dear  Mother  : — I  hope  that  by  this  time  your  appre- 
hensions regarding  the  present  stage  of  my  military 
experience  may  have  been  entirely  relieved.  You  see,  you 
had  your  wish  about  the  manner  of  my  going  over.  This 
is  a  larger  ship  than  the  [President  Grant]  and  is  a  very 
steady  sailer.  She  is  really  a  palace  in  comparison  with 
the  preceding  sardine  box  ship  into  which  we  were  packed. 
Even  the  private  soldiers  have  staterooms — unpretentious 
quarters  but  comfortable — and  there  is  plenty  of  deck- 
room.  Best  of  all,  there  is  plenty  of  light  at  night  in 
staterooms,  smoking  rooms  and  all  other  parts  of  the  ship 


To  Keep  Close  Touch  239 

where  the  illumination  can  be  concealed,  so  our  evenings 
are  not  useless  and  intolerable.  Which  only  goes  to  prove 
my  contention  all  along  that  equal  safety  could  have  been 
secured  on  the  [President  Grant]  without  plunging  her  into 
Cimmerian  darkness  at  sunset. 

The  food  is  excellent,  even  better  than  the  [President 
Grant 's]  and  there  is  plenty  of  it.  Thus  far,  moreover,  it 
has  proved  of  real  benefit  to  the  eaters,  for  the  sea  is  so 
calm  that  no  one  has  yet  suffered  from  seasickness.  We 
have  been  more  than  fortunate  in  the  weather  we  have 
drawn.  That  is  remarkable,  for  bad  weather  is  to  be 
expected  at  this  season. 

This  letter  is  being  written  in  sections.  This  pencil  part 
begins  at  noon  of  the  first  day  out.  I  will  write  as  much 
as  possible  before  to-morrow  so  that  if  the  opportunity 
comes  then  to  send  letters  back  I  may  give  you  quite  a  fat 
one.  I  am  in  hopes  that  if  I  turn  it  over  unsealed  for 
censorship  it  may  be  forwarded  at  once  without  waiting 
for  the  arrival  of  the  ship  on  the  other  side. 

In  regard  to  letters :  You  should  number  each  letter  you 
mail  me  as  I  have  numbered  this  one  at  the  top  of  the 
first  page.  Number  your  letters  consecutively  for  each 
month,  and  then  start  over  again,  and  I  will  do  the  same. 
In  this  manner  we  will  be  able  to  tell  whether  all  of  our 
letters  arrive.  Some  will  be  bound  to  miss,  owing  to  mis- 
haps to  the  ships  they  are  on,  or  to  confusion  in  the  han- 
dling of  the  mails. 

I  will  not  hear  from  you  for  some  weeks,  I  know,  but 
when  our  mail  ship  comes  in  I  hope  to  be  swamped  with 
letters.  It  will  be  better  for  you  to  mail  three  letters  a 
week,  so  that  though  one  or  two  miss  one  may  come 
through,  and  I  will  keep  the  chain  going  in  your  direction 
in  the  same  way. 

Here's  the  chance  to  mail  this,  so  I  must  stop. 

Much  love  to  Dad  and  yourself,  QuiNCY. 


240  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

On  Board  S.  S.  [Baltic], 

November  26,  191 7- 

Dear  Mother  :  Well !  Well !  So  here  I  am,  headed  out 
through  a  driving  snowstorm  over  a  no  man's  sea,  cleared 
from  a  port  of  nowhere  and  bound  for  a  port  of  nowhere — 
so  far  as  you  may  know. 

The  whole  adventure  makes  me  think  of  one  of  Dun- 
sany's  weird  little  stories  in  which  he  talks,  in  his  mystic 
way,  of  the  City  of  Nowhere  in  the  Land  of  Never  Was. 
I  hope  that  we  may  have  the  great  pleasure  of  being 
blessed  together  with  seeing  other  plays  from  his  gifted 
pen  even  more  masterly  than  The  Queen's  Enemies  and 
The  Gods  of  the  Mountain — that  we  may  see  them  together 
in  the  great  City  of  Somewhere  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Hudson  which  looms  up  through  the  mist  of  my  dreams  to 
the  stern  of  us,  as  strange  and  magical  as  any  dream  pile 
built  by  Dunsany's  Irish  pen  that  is  truly  great  in  that 
it  is  not  Irish  but  elemental. 

I  fell  to  thinking  when  we  started  forth  to-day  on  our 
real  journey  across  the  Atlantic  of  how  strange  it  was  that 
I  should  be  entering  on  this  new  phase  of  my  life  through  a 
snowstorm ;  you  have  told  me  that  it  was  in  a  time  of  snow- 
storm that  I  was  bom.  There  are  strange  coincidences  in 
life  which  are  no  doubt  but  accidents,  but  are,  nevertheless, 
more  than  interesting  to  the  mind  which  is  curious  about 
that  part  of  our  existence  here  that  is  more  than  physical. 
And  this  sailing  into  an  unknown  sea  to  an  unapproximable 
future  is  in  itself  a  new  birth  from  a  life  in  a  metropolitan 
office. 

A  very  interesting  ship's  company  I  am  associating  with 
while  aborning,  too,  from  the  old  lady  with  the  gray  hair 
who  smokes  endless  cigarettes  from  a  meerschaum  cigar- 
ette holder,  to  the  diminutive  "boots"  in  tightfit  blue 
navy  duds  and  brass  buttons,  both  quite  English,  don- 
chano,  and  both  quite  severe  about  it.     The  old  lady  I 


Steamship  Personalities  241 

picked  out  as  soon  as  I  came  aboard  as  being  the  most 
interesting  individual  on  the  ship.  She  is  a  very  Queen 
Elizabeth  sort  of  person  who  looks  as  though  she  would 
certainly  be  able  to  blurt  out  her  big,  big  D —  on  occasion. 
She  wears  rings  on  her  fingers  and  maybe  on  her  toes  and 
she  surely  has  diamonds  wherever  she  goes.  It  is  really 
quite  a  shock  to  see  her  settle  herself  in  a  corner  of  the 
writing  room,  and,  after  lighting  up  a  cigarette  and  giving 
the  assembled  company  a  sort  of  eagle-eyed  once-over  as  if 
she  were  looking  for  some  head  to  chop  off,  produce  her 
knitting  from  somewhere  and  apply  herself  to  a  pursuit 
really  feminine.  Who  she  is  I  don't  know,  but  I'll  find  out 
later  and  write  in  her  name.  I  think  she  must  have 
escaped  from  either  Bill  Shakespeare  or  Bernard  Shaw 
while  they  weren't  looking  and  maybe  I'll  have  to  put  her 
back  into  her  proper  place  after  the  war's  over.  She's 
worth  it,  all  right. 

Then  there  is  the  little  Scotchman  who  is  a  dead  ringer 
for  Andy  Carnegie,  and  the  brave  mother  who  is  traveling 
all  the  way  from  China  to  England  with  four  small  children. 
Why  she  should  be  at  sea  at  such  a  time  as  this  I  cannot 
comprehend,  but  I'll  find  that  out,  too,  and  tell  you. 
Cyril  Asquith  is  one  of  the  passengers — there  is  quite  a 
number  of  Canadian  and  English  officers— being  on  his 
way  home  from  Washington  where  he  has  been  on  some 
sort  of  official  mission.  He  devotes  himself  assiduously 
to  chess  with  several  select  cronies  and  maintains  a  proper 
distance  from  the  ordinary  herd.  What  struck  me  most 
forcibly  at  the  start  was  the  number  of  women  and  children 
aboard.  After  all  I  had  heard  about  how  women  and  chil- 
dren were  excluded  from  trans-Atlantic  travel  this  surprised 
me  greatly.     I  '11  find  out  later  why  it  is  the  case  on  this  ship. 

Later — The  mother  of  four  children  is  the  wife  of  an 
English  missionary  who  has  been  devoting  himself  for 


242  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

years  to  saving  Chinese  souls,  but  is  now  applying  himself 
to  a  much  more  practical  missionary  work  on  Germans  in 
France.  She  is  going  home  principally  because  of  the 
bad  health  of  her  oldest  child,  but  I  cannot  understand 
why  it  would  not  have  been  better  for  her  to  get  medical 
advice  in  the  U.  S.  There  is  not  a  person  aboard  who  is 
not  personally  connected  with  the  war  in  some  way.  Most 
of  the  women  are  the  wives  of  Canadian  or  British  officers. 
One  of  them  is  a  young  woman  going  over  to  marry  a 
Canadian  major.  Another,  with  whom  I  fell  to  talking,  is 
a  Southern  woman  from  Louisville,  Ky.,  whose  husband  is 
a  Britisher  and  who  is  going  over  after  some  fifteen  years 
in  America  to  do  his  bit  for  his  country.  They  have  their 
baby  with  them. 

Then  there  is  an  English  gentleman,  an  exporter  of  fine 
textiles,  who  is  just  finishing  his  looth  trip  across  the 
Atlantic,  He  is  taking  a  fatherly  interest  in  me  because 
he  has  two  sons,  both  of  whom  are  in  service.  Their 
father  complains  bitterly  that  he  can't  be  with  them 
because  the  doctors  say  he  is  "too  damned  old."  The 
older  boy,  a  lieutenant  in  the  Royal  Engineers,  has  been 
with  the  colors  since  1915,  and  is  to-day  no  worse  for  wear 
although  he  has  had  a  handful  of  shrapnel  scooped  out  of 
his  anatomy  by  the  doctors  once  or  twice.  The  other  boy, 
just  16,  couldn't  wait  to  grow  up  to  military  age  so  he  just 
entered  the  naval  service  voluntarily.  The  father  has 
given  me  much  valuable  advice  about  trench  boots,  flannel 
underwear,  etc.,  and  has  promised  me  his  son's  prescription 
for  keeping  vermin  as  near  subjection  as  may  be.  "You 
can't  keep  'em  off,"  says  Dad.  "When  the  boy  comes 
home  on  furlough  he  won't  come  into  the  house  until  he 
has  bathed  and  disinfected  out  in  the  wood-shed." 

Then  there  is  the  little  English  officer  who  saw  service 
as  an  aviator  on  the  first  day  of  the  war,  and  who  has  been 
at  the  front  a  total  of  two  years.     He  has  been  recently 


Torpedo  Habit  243 

detailed  to  instruct  our  aviators  in  America,  but  is  now 
bound  back  to  do  real  flying  again.  "Keep  your  head 
down  and  do  as  you're  told  and  your  name  will  never 
appear  in  the  casualty  lists,"  he  says.  I  was  much  dis- 
appointed to  hear  from  him  that  the  large  losses  at  Vimy 
Ridge  last  summer  were  due  to  the  same  old  irrepressible 
desire  of  the  British  territorials  to  overreach  the  mark  and 
take  more  than  the  ground  assigned  to  them.  "When  the 
barrage  is  properly  put  down,"  this  long-lived  Englishman 
says,  "it  is  a  pipe  to  take  the  trenches  allotted  to  you. 
It's  so  easy  you  just  want  to  keep  right  on  walking  through 
Hans  and  Fritz — but  you  don't  try  to  do  it  but  once. 
Get  your  men  to  realize  that  they  must  never  go  further 
than  they  are  told  if  they  want  to  go  back  to  the  States." 
Believe  me,  I  had  started  that  line  of  talk  the  day  I  hit  the 
organization ;  I  am  merely  adding  emphasis  now.  As  for 
keeping  my  head  down — my  nose  will  be  right  down  in 
the  dirt  when  orders  do  not  force  me  to  carry  it  higher. 

There  are  lots  of  British  soldiers  still  in  action  who  have 
been  in  for  the  whole  war.  The  chief  petty  officer  tells  me 
that  his  brother-in-law  and  his  pal,  field  artillerymen,  have 
come  through  it  all  practically  unscathed,  winning  thereby 
the  name  of  "the  lucky  beggars." 

As  for  the  submarine  menace,  you  really  wouldn't  know 
there  was  any  from  the  stolid  fashion  the  ship's  crew  go 
about  their  business.  Being  torpedoed  has  got  to  be  a 
habit  with  them,  from  the  captain,  who  was  torpedoed  on 
the  Arabic,  to  the  stewards.  My  mess  steward  has  been 
torpedoed  twice,  on  the  Laurentic  and  the  Nicosian,  and 
my  room  steward  was  torpedoed  on  the  Britannic  in  the 
Mediterranean.  And  I'll  venture  that  it  never  occurred 
to  any  of  them  to  quit  seafaring.  They  are  woodenly 
indifferent,  being  torpedoed  is  just  like  serving  the  soup 
with  them.  They  torpedo  their  H's  ruthlessly  and  without 
warning.     Henglish  as  she  is  spoke  is  a  frightfulness  sure 


244  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

enough.  I  sometimes  wonder  what  it  is  all  about.  And 
I'm  afraid  I'll  brain  my  bathroom  steward  yet  some  day 
when  he  appears  in  the  doorway  and  informs  me  that 
"Your  bawth  is  ready,  leftenant,  sir."  The  cats,  even, 
are  English  in  their  general  aloofness.  Ginger,  the 
tortoiseshell  tabby  who  rides  first  cabin,  permits  no 
liberties  from  anyone,  and  you  might  think  tiger  Jack  a 
duke  from  his  bearing  although  he  is  booked  permanently 
in  the  second  cabin.  Both  were  born  aboardship,  and 
their  offspring  are  all  seafarers  on  other  vessels. 

Speaking  of  young  Asquith,  to  whom  I  referred  in  an 
earlier  chapter,  he  bears  a  remarkable  resemblance  to  the 
pictures  of  his  father.  He  is  not  over  tall,  suggests  frail- 
ness by  general  appearance:  attenuated  fingers  and  face, 
the  latter  almost  wan  in  its  pallor,  and  a  habit  of  wearing 
a  big  coat  of  much  the  same  build  as  my  sheep-skin  jacket 
at  all  times,  even  when  he  is  sitting  here  in  the  writing- 
smoking  room  playing  chess  or  reading. 

Here,  in  this  continuous  dissertation  on  life  and  things 
aboard  ship,  I  will  weave  a  Thanksgiving  carol.  Take  my 
word  for  it,  this  bunch,  after  its  previous  experience  afloat, 
is  thankful  for  pretty  much  everything  in  sight.  They  all 
agree  they  are  enjoying  soldiering  de  luxe.  Anybody  in 
the  ranks  who  started  complaining  about  anything  would 
be  thrown  overboard  by  his  fellows.  They  had  turkey 
and  cranberries,  potatoes,  peas  and  plum  pudding  for 
noon  mess.  In  all  2200  lbs.  of  the  American  bird  were 
served  for  the  soldiers  on  this  ship  alone.  Our  big  dinner 
came  at  night  and  the  menu  set  before  us  was  as  follows: 

Blue  Points  on  the  half  shell ;  Consomme  Florida,  Potage 
St.  Louis;  Salmon  Trout  California;  Mutton  Cutlets 
America;  Prime  Ribs  and  Sirloin  of  Beef,  New  England 
Pudding;  Roast  Turkey,  Cranberry  Jelly;  Wax  Beans, 
Browned   Potatoes,   Plain   Boiled   Rice;   Salad,    Boston 


Thanksgiving  Day  245 

beans  with  Mayonnaise  dressing  and  lettuce;  New 
Hampshire  Pudding,  Congress  Tartlets;  Fruits,  Nuts; 
Coffee,  New  Orleans. 

This  bill  was  in  no  wise  better  than  our  regular  fare, 
however.  We  are  certainly  living  high.  Sometimes  we 
meet  old  acquaintances  under  strange  disguises  between 
the  soup  and  the  demi-tasse,  however.  For  instance,  there 
was  the  "Royal  Sea  Pie"  we  ordered  today,  be- 
ing inveigled  into  selecting  it  by  the  high-sounding 
name. 

"Hell!"  said  Lt.  Kelly  (he  who  was  arrested  five  times 
in  one  day  in  Tokio)  when  our  portions  were  set  before  us, 
"I  was  aboard  a  transport  in  the  middle  of  the  Pacific 
bound  for  the  Philippines  nineteen  years  ago  this  Thanks- 
giving Day  and  we  had  'Royal  Sea  Pie'  every  meal — only 
we  called  it,  'slumgullion. ' " 

You  would  have  recognized  the  dish  as  plain  Irish  stew. 
So  are  the  lowly  exalted  on  shipboard — and  it  was  good 
stew,  too. 

Here's  how  I  spent  my  Thanksgiving  Day,  the  routine 
being  practically  the  same  as  that  for  every  day,  except 
that  ordinarily  we  have  an  hour's  officer's  school  instead  of 
church  at  3  P.M.:  Up  at  7  45  for  my  ' '  bawth ' '  in  sea  water, 
comfortably  heated ;  8  o'clock,  breakfast ;  9-10,  getting  the 
men's  quarters  cleaned  up;  10-10:30,  setting  up  exercises; 
10:30-12:30,  visiting  and  talking  with  the  men  below 
decks;  i  o'clock,  lunch;  2 :30,  boat  drill;  3  o'clock.  Thanks- 
giving service,  held  by  an  Episcopal  minister  from  the  first 
cabin;  4-6,  cards  and  chess;  6-7,  cleaning  up  for  dinner;  7, 
dinner;  8-10:30,  writing  or  playing  cards.  Every  little 
while  throughout  this  program  we  pause  for  an  extra  bite 
to  eat.  They  serve  clam  broth  on  the  sun  deck  every  so 
often,  and  at  5  p.m.  "tay"  is  served  here  in  the  library. 
Right  after  dinner  you  get  a  demi-tasse  here  with  your 


246  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

cigar — smoking  is  prohibited  in  the  dining  saloon — and  I 
always  get  mine  here  because  the  coffee  is  better  than  that 
downstairs.  And  along  about  10  p.m.  the  steward  passes 
around  sandwiches. 

I  haven't  been  seasick  yet,  although  the  sea  has  been  a 
bit  rough  more  than  once,  but  I've  come  pretty  near  to 
eating  myself  sick  several  times.  My  fellow  officers  won- 
der "what  the  devil  I  find  to  write  so  much  about" — but 
it's  all  in  the  point  of  view.  There  is  more  than  I  can 
write  about.  But  I  mustn't  omit  the  incident  of  the 
Sam  Browne  belts.  You  remember  these  lowans  decried 
the  Sam  Browne  belts  in  much  the  same  fashion  as 
"Cyclone"  Davis  decried  the  linen  collar  on  first  hitting 
Washington.  But  just  as  Jeff  submitted  to  being  properly 
collared  before  retiring  to  the  wilds  of  Texas  so  the  lowans 
have  submitted  to  being  properly  harnessed  in  Sam 
Browne  belts.  More  than  that,  they  actually  jumped  into 
the  harness  on  the  first  excuse,  and  some  of  those  who  had 
held  the  Sam  Browne  in  the  deepest  contempt  were  the 
first  and  eagerest  jumpers.  You  see  it's  this  way:  The 
belt  is  required  for  all  officers  of  the  Allied  Armies  so  that 
the  soldiers  of  all  nations  may  be  able  to  recognize  officers 
of  other  nations  and  show  them  the  proper  military 
courtesies.  I  had  supposed  that  the  belt  was  merely  an 
adornment,  but  it  is  a  necessity,  as  has  been  proven  by 
experience,  to  prevent  confusion  within  the  Allies'  complex 
military  machine. 

Personally,  I  think  that  the  added  "set  up"  which  the 
belt  gives  to  the  American  officer  would  justify  its  use  if 
there  was  no  real  necessity  for  it.  In  the  same  manner,  I 
think  it  is  short-sighted  policy  that  the  American  private 
soldier's  uniform  is  not  so  well  made  and  of  such  good 
material  as  to  inspire  him  with  pride  in  his  personal 
appearance,  as  the  Canadian  uniform  does  the  men  who 
wear  it.     The  American  uniform  is  too  much  like  a  suit  of 


Women  in  the  War  247 

overalls,  and  naturally  it  is  treated  as  overalls  will  always 
be  treated.     This  is  not  right. 

To  get  off  on  another  tack  again,  here  is  what  my  Eng- 
lish friend  had  to  say  to  me  today,  he  whose  son  is  a 
lieutenant  in  the  Royal  Engineers:  "When  you  get  to 
England  you  will  find  the  people  who  are  really  mad  about 
this  war.  They  are  the  English  women.  They  are  actu- 
ally doing  the  work  of  the  nation ;  it  couldn't  keep  the  war 
going  without  them.  Those  women  are  working  because 
their  husbands  and  sons  and  sweethearts  are  in  the 
trenches  and  need  their  support.  And  you  deprive  a 
bunch  of  women  of  their  sweethearts  and  they  are  like  a 
bunch  of  mad  cats — they  want  to  scratch  every  body  in 
sight.  Wait  until  your  American  women  really  know  what 
it  means  to  be  so  deprived  and  you  will  find  out  what  sort 
of  stuff  they  are  really  made  of.  This  war  is  making  out 
of  our  women  what  suffrage  could  never  make  out  of  them : 
real  thinking  citizens  who  realize  how  vital  is  their  interest 
in  their  government."  This  from  a  man  engaged  in 
running  an  international  business  is  interesting.  The 
women  will  prove  themselves  worthy  of  their  rights  in 
spite  of  the  Jearmette  Rankins. 

I  spoke  of  spending  time  talking  with  the  men,  and  in 
relation  to  this  I  know  you  will  be  interested  to  hear  more 
of  the  big  sergeant,  Phil.  Koester,  whose  appearance  you 
liked  so  much.  Incidentally,  I  was  glad  he  was  assigned 
to  my  lifeboat  for  obvious  reasons.  Koester  tells  me  that 
his  parents  were  bom  in  Germany  and  that  his  father  is  as 
pro-German  in  sympathy  as  most  of  them.  His  service 
in  the  U.  S.  Army  is  a  great  blow  to  his  father,  he  says,  as 
five  of  his  (the  sergeant's)  uncles  and  many  cousins  are  in 
the  German  service.  There  is  nothing  wrong  about  the 
son's  mental  processes,  though.  He  is  straight  American 
in  his  utterances  and  I  am  sure  that  he  is  sincere.  I  have 
a  lot  of  fun  out  of  another  German-American  sergeant  in 


248  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

our  company  named  Maus ;  the  Teutonic  pronunciation  of 
which  is  mouse.  It  is  too  funny  for  anything  that  this 
man  should  be  not  only  small  and  suggestive  in  appearance 
of  Krazy  Kat's  arch  enemy  in  the  Evening  Journal,  but  is 
equally  as  belligerent  as  that  terror  of  the  electrotypes.  I 
call  him  "Sergeant  Ignatz"  sometimes  but  he  doesn't 
catch  on,  of  course.  Had  he  gone  to  a  New  York  public 
school  Ignatz  would  have  been  the  only  name  he  would 
ever  have  heard.     Like  Koester,  he  is  a  good  soldier. 

Since  starting  on  our  voyage  we  have  had  a  little  bit  of 
every  sort  of  weather  in  King  Winter's  pack,  from  mild 
moonlight  and  smooth  sea  to  what  the  sailor  folk  term 
tonight  '"arf  a  gale" — which  a  large  percentage  of  the 
landlubbers  aboard  view  as  more  nearly  approximating  a 
gale  and  a  'arf — right  off  the  ice,  with  waves  smashing 
over  the  bow  and  spray  flying  the  whole  length  of  the  boat. 
Every  time  the  old  girl  sticks  her  nose  down  into  the 
Atlantic  she  pauses  perceptibly,  then  shivers  all  through  as 
if  she  were  blowing  the  water  out  of  her  nostrils,  and  lunges 
forward  again.  It  is  a  motion  not  without  a  certain 
inspiration — unless  it  makes  you  seasick  by  constant  and 
persistent  repetition.  Personally,  I  hope  that  the  wind 
will  blow  harder  and  harder  on  each  successive  day  until 
we  reach  port,  for  the  harder  the  wind  the  rougher  the 
sea  and  the  less  the  chance  for  some  dear  little  U-boat  to 
tickle  our  ribs.  The  ideal  trip  would  be  one  on  which  we 
saw  a  U-boat  blown  out  of  the  water  'fore  it  could  get  us. 
Next  to  that,  the  best  thing  is  no  periscope  sighted  at  all. 
But  if  one  is  sighted  we  apprehend  no  danger;  our  convoy 
is  sufficient. 

We  had  a  talk  today  from  Col.  S.  Wishart,  who  has  been 
training  English  officers  and  who  suggested  several  things 
for  American  officers  to  note  particularly.  Col.  Wishart 
has  organized  two  artillery  brigades,  but  because  he  is 
60  he  was  not  allowed  to  go  to  the  front.     He  would  pass 


A  French  Fire  Eater  249 

for  50,  and  he  is  so  mad  about  being  kept  out  of  active 
service  that  I  wouldn't  be  at  all  surprised  to  hear  of  his 
busting  right  through  Von  Hindenburg's  line  single-handed 
and  capturing  both  the  Kaiser  and  Berlin  before  tiffin 
some  fine  day. 

To  return  to  the  subject  of  the  ship's  cats,  you  certainly 
would  have  laughed  the  first  day  we  sailed  into  the  sub- 
marine zone  when  Ginger  walked  into  the  dining  saloon 
equipped,  as  everybody  else  was,  with  a  cork  jacket.  One 
of  the  stewardesses  had  made  it  for  her,  and  while  the  cat 
kept  her  ears  laid  back  all  the  time,  denoting  acute  dis- 
pleasure, she  wore  the  thing  with  wonderful  composure. 
I  would  surely  like  to  see  Sweet  so  equipped.  If  he 
couldn't  shake  the  life  preserver  off  he'd  just  about  dive 
over  the  rail  to  try  it  out.  Ginger  is  a  pretty  slick  article. 
She  came  limping  in  to  dinner  last  night  as  if  somebody 
had  nearly  mashed  her  foot  off.  Naturally  everybody  fed 
her  up  in  sympathy — and  after  she'd  got  the  last  bite  of 
chicken  in  sight  she  walked  out  of  the  place  waving  her 
tail  over  four  as  sound  feet  as  you  ever  saw,  and  wearing 
on  her  countenance  an  expression  suggesting  close  kinship 
between  herself  and  the  cat  that  ate  the  canary.  "Bless 
you ! "  said  one  of  the  stewards  to  me :  "We  think  as  much 
of  that  cat  as  we  do  of  one  of  ourselves."  She  is  about 
5  years  old  and  Sweet's  general  build. 

This  continues  to  grow  words  day  by  day,  this  rambling 
epistle  of  mine.  Now  I  must  tell  3^ou  about  a  little  French- 
man, a  sergeant-major  in  our  service.  His  name  is  Alfred 
Gay,  and  his  father,  a  French  general,  was  killed,  he  says 
at  Verdun.  He  has  lost  several  brothers  and  other 
relations,  all  colonels  and  majors,  and  was  wounded  five 
times  himself,  being  retired  three  times  on  account  of 
woimds.  And  it's  three  times  and  out  in  the  French  serv- 
ice, so  he  came  to  America  and  took  a  non-commissioned 
officer's  job  although  he  was  a  captain  when  he  was 


250  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

relieved  from  further  service  for  his  country.  Listen  to 
what  he  says :  "  Ze  fighting,  zat  ees  not  ze  hard  sing.  Oh ! 
no.  Eet  ees  ze  living  in  ze  dugout  and  ze  ditch  in  ze  rain 
and  ze  mud  and  ze  snow,  and  ze  bugs — and  eespec-i-allee 
ze  bugs.  Ze  real  fighting  ees  not  wis  ze  Gairmans  but  wis 
ze  bugs.  Every  morning  you  fight  heem.  You  take  off 
your  shirt  and  you  fight  heem.  And  who  ees  ze  greatest 
soldair?  Ze  greatest  soldair  ees  he  who  keels  ze  most 
bugs.    Hah!" 

You  see  this  Frenchman  is  just  as  gay  as  his  name.  But 
he  is  more  or  less  of  a  crape-hanger  for  those  superior 
American  officers  who  started  over  with  the  idea  that  the 
captains  and  majors  and  colonels  and  generals  escape,  and 
that  it's  only  the  lieutenants  who  get  shot  up.  Here's 
Gay,  who  started  in  as  a  lieutenant  the  first  day  of  the  war 
and  is  still  as  gay  as  ever,  while  his  relatives  of  higher  rank 
have  many  of  them  taken  the  count.  He  is  as  fine  looking 
a  specimen  of  humanity  as  you  ever  saw,  even  if  he  has  a 
bullet  of  some  sort  packed  away  somew^here  in  one  of  the 
cartilages  of  his  heart.  He  is  a  physician  of  real  skill,  and 
speaks  about  every  language  on  the  list.  Because  he  is 
not  an  American  citizen  he  cannot  hold  a  commission  in 
our  army,  but  I  have  a  notion  that  some  means  of  making 
real  use  of  his  talents  instead  of  wasting  them  on  a  non- 
com's  position  will  be  found. 

It  is  something  of  a  coincidence  again,  that  I  am  finish- 
ing this  letter  on  your  birthday,  Dec.  6.  I  mailed  you 
another  en  route,  which  I  hope  has  reached  you  already, 
and  I  have  also  filed  a  cablegram  which  should  satisfy  you 
that  my  voyage  was  all  that  could  be  desired.  I  will  write 
as  often  as  I  can,  be  sure  of  that,  and  you  do  the  same — 
and  don't  worry. 

With  much  love  for  Dad  and  yourself  and  the  rest  of  the 
family, 

QUINCY. 


How  Small  the  World  Is  251 

The  Baltic  entered  the  Mersey  and  steamed  up  to 
Liverpool  on  December  7.  She  lay  in  the  stream  until 
high  tide  and  docked  on  the  8th.  The  voyage  had  been 
uneventful.  Not  even  the  fin  of  a  U-boat  was  seen.  The 
next  letter  Mills  had  doubtless  begun  to  write  while  the 
vessel  was  in  the  stream,  but  apparently  he  concluded 
it  after  landing : 

Where?  [Probably  Winchester] 

December  7,  1917- 

Dear  Mother:  Just  when  this  will  be  mailed  I  do  not 
know,  but  it  will  be  in  the  nature  of  a  Merry  Christmas- 
Happy  New  Year  letter,  and  I  hope  it  may  reach  you 
during  if  not  on  the  eve  of  the  holiday  season.  You  know 
that  while  I  may  be  absent  from  you  folks  in  the  body  I 
will  be  with  you  in  spirit  on  these,  the  home  days  of  all  the 
year. 

Landing  here  on  this  shore  of  the  Atlantic,  I  can  only  say 
that  I  had  never  before  realized  how  small  the  world  is. 
When  there  are  ties  to  your  heartstrings  on  the  other  side 
of  the  ocean,  time  and  distance  assume  aspects  totally 
different.  It  is,  after  all,  only  a  thought's  distance  around 
the  earth.  The  thing  that  always  made  it  seem  so  far 
before  was  that  there  was  no  one  here  to  think  about.  I 
know  by  experience  that  this  is  unassailable  truth ;  and  I 
have  no  doubt  that  you  have  made  the  same  discovery. 

I  sincerely  trust  that  the  means  of  actual  physical 
communication  will  be  as  good  as  my  friend  Mr.  D.  says 
that  they  are  for  the  English  troops.  He  says  that  mail 
for  the  British  troops  is  delivered  promptly  even  if  the 
men  are  in  the  first  line  trenches.  His  son  has  found  this 
to  be  the  easiest  way  to  get  clean  socks  and  handkerchiefs, 
while  in  the  first  line.  W^hen  he  goes  in,  he  mails  a  card 
notifying  his  mother  to  send  him  packages  on  certain  days. 
Two  days  after  a  package  leaves  London,  the  boy  gets  it, 


252  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

puts  on  his  clean  socks  and  fights  Fritz  in  as  sanitary  fash- 
ion as  possible. 

Mr,  D.  has  certainly  been  kind  to  me.  He  has  offered 
to  keep  for  me  any  excess  stuff  I  may  have  on  going  into 
active  service  for  the  first  period.  Personal  property  left 
behind  is  frequently  lost,  his  son  has  found.  Therefore 
if  I  have  anything  I  want  taken  care  of  at  any  time  I  will 
pack  up  a  trunkf ul  and  send  it  to  Mr.  D.'s  home.  When- 
ever I  want  any  of  the  articles  he  will  send  them  to  me  one 
at  a  time.  This  gentleman  has  been  so  kind  to  me  that 
I  think  it  would  be  a  graceful  thing  for  you  to  write  him  a 
note  thanking  him  for  his  attention.  I  have  talked  with  him 
a  lot,  and  have  got  a  lot  of  first-hand  information  about 
the  British  representative  system  of  government  which 
strengthens  me  in  the  opinion  I  already  held  that  it  is 
both  more  responsive  and  more  responsible  than  the 
American. 

Mr.  D.  and  other  Englishmen  I  talked  with  aboard  were 
as  much  grieved  at  the  big  Hillquit  vote  [in  the  New 
York  Mayoralty  election]  as  I  am.  They  all  express  the 
opinion  that  this  result  of  the  New  York  election  is  one  of 
the  most  sinister  social  indications  of  recent  times.  I 
must  admit  that  sometimes  I  feel  that  the  world  must  be 
coming  to  an  end.  But  unless  history  is  going  to  change 
its  whole  course  and  run  contrary  in  the  twentieth  century 
to  everything  that  has  happened — no  matter  how  slow  it 
has  been  in  happening — since  the  record  of  history  began, 
this  war  will  turn  out  right  in  the  end  as  will  the  social 
mess  of  which  the  Hillquit  vote  is  only  one  of  the  mani- 
festations, and  the  world  will  continue  to  be  not  only 
habitable,  but  a  little  more  so  each  year.  Certes  this  is  so ; 
however :  If  Hun  and  Socialist  triumph  they  will  pull  the 
world  down  on  top  of  themselves,  even  as  Samson  pulled 
down  the  temple  of  the  profane  gods  of  his  day. 

Yes,  I  guess  you'll  have  to  write  me  down  an  optimist. 


Observations  of  a  Censor  253 

Of  course,  there  is  particular  reason  for  my  optimism  just 
at  this  time  at  the  conclusion  of  a  trip  through  the  sub- 
marine zone  so  peaceful  that  it  might  have  been  on  the 
Great  Lakes,  which  are  certainly  submarine  locked, 
in  a  period  of  dead  calm.  We  did  have  a  bit  of  "narsty  " 
weather — as  these  blooming  Henglish  termed  it — but  I 
didn't  suffer  at  all  from  mal-de-mer,  and  didn't  mind.  As 
several  of  the  men  expressed  it  in  letters  to  their  folks  our 
ship  did  rock  like  a  cradle  that  was  being  handled  roughly, 
but  the  rough  handling  only  rendered  the  cradle  safer,  so 
the  more  violent  the  rocking  the  better  I  liked  it. 

I  happen  to  know  about  the  men's  letters  because  I 
helped  censor  the  batch  that  went  off  at  the  end  of  the 
voyage,  and  I  guess  I  will  know  considerably  more,  as 
I  am  to  be  company  censor  when  we  get  finally  located. 
Pathetically  elementary  in  many  ways  were  the  letters  I 
read,  but  they  came  from  the  right  kind  of  hearts,  stout 
and  strong  and  undismayed  by  the  discomforts  of  troop 
travel,  and  the  prospects  of  hardships  more  trying  still  to 
come.  Few  of  the  men  are  married,  yet  out  of  the  batch 
of  letters  sent  off  at  the  port  of  debarkation  an  amazingly 
small  proportion  were  to  sweethearts.  All  the  men  wrote 
home.     Their  hearts  were  clearly  there  first. 

It  is  curious  how  hard  it  is  for  them  to  write  without 
falling  foul  of  the  censor.  The  things  that  strike  them  are 
the  most  obvious  things  that  would  be  of  most  value  to  the 
enemy  if  divulged,  and  when  the  ban  is  placed  on  the  men- 
tion of  these  they  feel  that  there  is  nothing  left  for  them  to 
say.  The  manner  in  which  the  censorship  rules  cramp 
them  is  clearly  evident  in  their  expression.  I  have 
remarked  before  to  you  how  like  great  big  children  they 
are,  and  I  am  more  than  ever  impressed  by  that  quality 
in  the  adult  human  individual.  On  the  ship  I  saw  a  great 
deal  of  the  men,  and  I  believe  that  I  have  made  many  fast 
friends  among  them.     Perhaps  I  flatter  myself,  but  I  hope 


254  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

not,  for  I  have  certainly  become  very  fond  of  those  of  my 
company  as  a  whole,  and  of  many  individually. 

Speaking  of  my  optimism,  it  will  be  impossible  for  you  to 
comprehend  the  total  unconcern  of  everybody  aboard  our 
ship,  not  alone  the  crew  who  are  used  to  the  experience, 
regarding  the  U-boat.  If  it  had  not  been  for  the  life 
preservers  which  all  of  us  had  to  keep  with  us  all  the  time, 
you  would  not  have  supposed  that  any  of  us  ever  thought 
of  danger.  As  we  approached  this  side,  the  increased 
convoy  increased  our  confidence,  of  course.  There  is 
nothing  more  reassuring  than  the  sight  of  torpedo  boat 
destroyers  kicking  up  the  water  all  around  you.  They  are 
the  most  impudent  little  sea  devils  imaginable,  regular 
little  sauceboxes,  with  the  fact  that  they  are  just  spoiling 
for  a  U-boat  scrap  written  all  over  them. 

How  the  Huns  must  hate  our  sea  power  you  can  under- 
stand after  seeing  these  destroyers  racing  around  with 
their  bows  in  the  air  hunting  for  trouble,  and  mad  because 
they  don't  find  it.  And  after  seeing  them  operate  you 
understand  why  you  see  no  subs ;  it  would  be  sure  death  to 
one  to  show  a  periscope.  Could  there  only  be  enough 
destroyers  to  go  'round  there  would  be  no  submarine  peril 
for  any  ship.  They  remind  you  for  all  the  world  of  a  pack 
of  rat  terriers  scouring  about  for  a  rat,  and  if  they  found 
him  the  shaking  he  got  would  be  truly  Frightful. 

You  see,  my  baptism  of  torpedo  fire  which  you  worried 
over  so  was  nothing  of  an  ordeal  at  all.  Now  be  sensible 
and  do  not  worry  because  after  some  months  of  training 
there  will  be  another  baptism  of  fire.  The  English  officers 
tell  us  that  the  conservation  of  life  in  battle  is  being  made 
more  of  a  science  every  day — as  it  has  to  be — and  that 
when  the  casualties  are  heavy  it  is  because  the  infantry 
fails  to  co-operate  with  the  artillery.  Too  great  daring, 
too  overwhelming  a  desire  to  get  at  the  Huns — these  are 
the  greatest  enemies  to  overcome.     "Do  what  you  're 


Wimbledon  and  Mom  Hill  255 

told!"  If  troops  can  only  get  that  beaten  through  their 
skulls  they  are  pretty  sure  to  retain  those  skulls  for  pro- 
tracted use  against  Kultur.  But  if  they  insist  on  ram- 
ming their  skulls  against  the  Hindenburg  line  that  line  is 
likely  to  resemble  a  stone  wall  indefinitely.  That  it  is  not 
a  stone  wall  when  properly  attacked  has  been  proved 
already.  The  jaunty  destroyer  using  its  brains  to  get  the 
U-boat,  and  not  trying  to  sink  dreadnaughts  by  ramming 
them,  is  a  pretty  good  example  for  the  infantry  man  to 
follow. 

I  am  permitted  to  say  that  we  landed  in  England,  I  am 
informed,  but  not  to  name  the  port.  How  long  we  shall 
be  here  I  do  not  know  but  I  hope  it  will  be  long  enough  to 
see  something  of  London.  Mr.  D.  has  offered  to  show  me 
and  any  friends  I  may  want  to  bring  along  all  of  London 
that  can  be  seen  in  whatever  time  we  may  have.  He 
knows  the  city,  as  he  has  grown  up  in  it. 

My  love  to  you  and  Dad  for  Christmas.  It  should  be 
the  happiest  you  have  ever  spent  because  you  have  a  son 
in  the  service  I  am  in.  You  will  hear  from  me  again  as 
soon  as  I  have  the  opportunity  to  write.  Quincy. 

The  second  Battalion  and  the  machine  gunners  were 
sent  into  quarters  at  Wimbledon  and  Mom  Hill  rest 
camps.  From  this  location.  Mills  wrote  another  long 
letter : 

Somewhere  in  England, 

December  lo,  1917. 

Dear  Mother  :  Although  I  sent  you  a  letter  on  arriv- 
ing I  will  send  you  another  now,  for  perhaps  my  oppor- 
tunities for  writing  may  be  less  after  moving  on.  And, 
besides,  all  the  letters  may  not  reach  you.  I  know  that 
there  is  no  manner  in  which  I  can  spend  my  time  that  will 
be  as  valuable  in  that  the  results  will  mean  so  much  to  you, 
and,  furthermore,  I  thoroughly  enjoy  writing  letters.     My 


256  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

incorrigibility  with  the  pencil  dumbfounds  my  associates. 
Most  of  them  view  writing  a  letter  as  an  awesome  task, 
and  I  really  believe  some  of  them  think  I  must  be  out  of 
my  mind  to  be  so  devoted  to  it.  As  an  excuse  for  not 
writing  they  urge  that  the  censor  won't  pass  the  letters 
anyway.  Which  reminds  me  that  in  your  answer  I  wish 
you  would  tell  me  whether  my  letters  have  been  cut  to  any 
extent  by  the  censor.  I  try  to  keep  off  anything  that 
would  give  military  information,  and  hope  that  I  have 
succeeded  in  getting  through  unmutilated  letters. 

My  trip  through  England  I  have  enjoyed  greatly,  but  I 
fear  that  I  will  miss  the  part  most  to  be  desired,  a  sight  of 
London.  From  the  car  window  en  route  to  a  rest  camp 
here  I  witnessed  a  panorama  of  tidiness.  The  country- 
side was  a  succession  of  fields  bounded  by  endless  hedges 
laid  out  "just  so,"  and  of  towns  and  cities  full  of  rows  of 
two-storied  houses  separated  by  narrow  streets,  each  as 
neat  as  a  pin.  Every  little  house  and  garden  made  me 
look  close  to  see  if  the  housewife  were  not  somewhere 
about  still  at  her  daily  task  of  brushing  off  every  shingle 
and  vegetable  with  a  feather  duster. 

I  saw  very  little  woodland  and  few  untilled  fields ;  those 
untilled  were  being  used  for  grazing.  In  the  rural  districts 
thatched  roofs  were  frequent,  and  all  the  haymows  were 
built  up  alike,  precisely  like  rectangular  houses  with 
steeply  slanting  roofs  and  overhanging  eaves.  And  I  am 
not  surprised  at  the  amount  of  mutton  that  has  been  fed 
to  me  since  my  arrival,  for  there  were  sheep  everywhere. 
Your  friend  of  the  sheep  pictures — Is  it  Mauve  or  Millet  ? 
— couldn't  help  finding  a  subject  every  time  he  turned 
'round  on  this  island.  And  the  entire  landscape,  as  a 
whole,  was  like  a  giant  Corot. 

I  think  the  atmospheric  conditions  prevalent  must 
produce  the  remarkable  Corot  effects.  The  bare  brown 
branches  of  the  trees  assume  a  richness  against  the  English 


Things  English  257 

sky  which  I  never  noted  in  our  country.  It  is  remarkable. 
And  I  saw  any  number  of  brooks  which  might  have  been 
murmuring :  '  *  Men  may  come  and  men  may  go,  but  I  go 
on  forever."  The  Httle  houses  in  the  older  towns  you  pass 
remind  you  of  the  Shakesperian  stage  settings  you  have 
seen — actually  the  real  houses  are  little  larger  than  the 
sham  ones — and  honestly  it  wouldn't  surprise  me  to  see 
some  figure  in  doublet  and  hose  come  around  any  corner. 
All  along  the  road  were  church  buildings  that  looked  old 
enough  to  have  been  relics  of  Saxon  days,  and  every  now 
and  then  we  passed  a  crumbling  stone  bridge  whereon  it 
was  easy  to  visualize  men  in  suits  of  mail  busy  macing 
each  other's  heads  off. 

You  should  have  heard  the  men  jeer  the  dinky  little 
railway  coaches  when  we  landed — engines  and  coaches 
remind  you  of  the  pictures  of  the  first  American  railway 
trains — but  they  remained  aboard  the  coaches  long  enough 
to  respect  them.  There  is  no  denying  that  the  English 
trains  move  more  smoothly,  with  less  jar  from  the  wheels, 
and  that  they  get  there  more  promptly.  Mr.  D.  told  me 
that  it  is  as  unusual  for  an  English  railway  train  to  be  late 
as  for  an  Americn  railway  train  to  be  on  time.  I  must 
give  the  English  full  credit,  too,  for  the  way  they  beat  us  at 
keeping  the  railway  right  of  way  clear  of  unsightly  adver- 
tising signs,  and  all  other  eyesores.  With  rare  exceptions, 
the  residential  and  factory  areas  immediately  adjacent  to 
the  tracks  we  passed  over  were  as  clean  as  the  Sage 
Foundation  colony  at  Forest  Hills,  and  not  unlike  it  in 
appearance.  Contrast  this  with  the  usual  filthiness  of 
any  American  city's  railroad  district. 

While  contrasting  things  English  and  American  it  is 
well  enough  to  mention  the  girls.  Our  American  girls 
"have  it  on"  their  English  sisters  as  to  pretty  faces  and 
figures,  but  the  complexions  of  these  English  women  are 
the  most  wonderful  I  have  ever  seen.  The  men  have  the 
17 


258  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

same  rosy  cheeks.  Maybe  it's  the  English  climate,  which 
certainly  needs  some  redeeming  feature,  for  it  is  as  gener- 
ous with  fog  as  you  have  heard.  While  there  has  been  no 
rain  since  our  arrival,  the  air  has  been  so  heavy  with  mist 
as  to  keep  the  roads  in  a  continual  muddy  paste,  which  we 
are  told  will  last  until  summer,  except  when  frozen.  With 
all  the  lights  out  because  of  the  air  raid  danger,  you  simply 
cannot  walk  abroad  at  night  without  bumping  into  other 
pedestrians.  Under  the  circumstances  it  is  fortunate  that 
the  roads  and  streets  are  devoid  of  practically  all  save 
military  vehicular  traffic.  As  to  temperature,  the  weather 
is  less  cold  than  raw. 

To  digress  back  to  the  girl  subject,  you  have  no  notion 
how  attractive  is  this  Billy  Burke  pajama  costimie  worn 
by  the  British  factory  girl.  No  matter  how  homely  she  is, 
this  costume  gives  a  girl  a  winsomeness  which  the  pictures 
reproduced  in  the  American  newspapers  fail  wholly  to 
convey.  When  American  working  girls  catch  on  to  this,  I 
expect  fully  that  they  will  wear  their  pajamas  even  to  and 
from  work  on  the  L  and  subway  trains. 

The  restriction  on  the  ration  supply  here  makes  you 
realize  at  once  that  the  country  is  at  war.  You  are  famil- 
iar with  my  appetite,  so  it  is  sufficient  for  me  to  say  that 
by  eating  tea  at  5  yesterday  and  dinner  right  afterward  I 
managed  to  get  enough  to  sustain  life  overnight.  Just  so 
much  and  no  more  may  be  served  to  each  person  at  each 
meal,  and  the  portions  are  rather  meagre.  If  you  lick  the 
platter  clean,  there  is  enough  for  the  time  being,  but  you 
are  hungry  before  the  next  meal.  When  Broadway  is 
restricted  to  this  extent  Broadway  will  be  fighting  mad — 
and  the  sooner  the  better.  For  Americans  do  not  yet  re- 
alize that  they  are  at  war.  In  this  regard,  I  want  to  say 
that  if  you  wish  to  send  me  presents  that  will  be  appreci- 
ated just  mail  me  a  pound  tin  of  coffee  now  and  then.  The 
coffee  we  get  here  is  just  about  on  a  par  with  the  South's 


German  Prisoners  259 

Civil  War  coffee,  and  we  are  advised  that  the  further  east 
we  go  the  worse  the  decoction  gets.  The  dearth  of  tobacco 
is  also  very  apparent  already,  so  if  you  will  mail  me  a 
box  of  cigars  every  now  and  then  they  will  come  in  handy. 

I  went  to  church  yesterday  at  Winchester  Cathedral, 
which  is  one  of  the  oldest  religious  edifices  in  the  country, 
I  think,  and  is  of  the  Norman  type  of  architecture,  massive 
and  cold,  particularly  as  to  the  impression  given  by  the 
interior.  I  had  a  meal,  also,  at  an  inn  said  to  have  been 
once  a  hostelry  patronized  by  William  the  Conqueror,  and 
the  interior,  with  massive  hewn  oak  rafters,  certainly 
appears  old  enough  to  have  been  here  in  his  time.  The 
main  road  by  here  was  built  originally  by  Caesar's  legion- 
aries. So  you  see  we  are  on  historic  ground.  Our  quar- 
ters are  in  what  the  English  call  "huts,"  which  are  actually 
very  comfortable  concrete  and  galvanized  iron  barracks. 
We  are  two  in  a  room,  with  iron  beds,  a  washstand,  shelves 
and  a  miniature  Franklin  heater  which  can  make  more 
heat  on  less  fuel  than  any  stove  I  ever  saw.  There  are 
several  organizations  of  women,  enlisted  for  such  military 
service  as  they  can  perform,  in  the  vicinity,  and  they 
are  certainly  a  cheerful  and  healthy  looking  lot.  Also, 
they  seem  to  make  Tommy  Atkins's  lot  much  more 
cheerful. 

The  English  are  working  batches  of  German  prisoners 
all  about,  and  while  the  Fritzes  are  a  strong  enough  look- 
ing bunch,  many  of  them  are  undersized,  and  a  great  many 
of  them  are  around  the  40-year  mark.  They  haven't  by 
any  means  the  Prussian  Guard  appearance  of  formid- 
ableness. 

The  hardest  part  of  my  journey  has  been  that  I  haven't 
got  any  mail,  and  I  figure  out  that  it  will  probably  be  three 
weeks  yet  before  I  receive  any.  But  I  hope  that  when  the 
letters  do  start  the  chain  will  be  uninterrupted.  As  I  have 
told  you  before,  you  and  Dad  must  not  worry  about  me, 


26o  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

for  I  am  in  the  best  of  health,  and  am  having  an  experi- 
ence that  is  a  privilege. 

I  almost  forgot  to  say  that  the  soldier  who  takes  care  of 
these  quarters  has  a  coal  black  kitten  which  isn't  suffering 
any  from  the  -food  conservation  campaign.  Lots  of  love 
to  both  of  you — and  don't  worry.  QuiNCY. 


CHAPTER  IX 

At  Last  in  France— Quaint  and  Grim  Habitations  in  a  Glittering 
Winter  Landscape— Langres  and  Fort  de  Peigney— Friendly 
French  Relations. 

The  Battalion  entrained  for  Southampton  on  Decem- 
ber 12.  It  was  put  on  board  the  side-wheel  steamer  La 
France  and  safely  taken  across  the  Channel  to  Havre. 
There  it  was  quartered  in  Rest  Camp  No.  2,  described 
by  a  brother  officer  as  made  up  of  "tiny  conical  tents  of 
the  type  the  English  use  in  Egypt  and  India — not  more 
than  ten  feet  in  diameter ;  twelve  men  to  each  tent." 

Mills  wrote  home  that  very  evening : 

Somewhere  in  France,  December  12,  191 7. 

My  dear  Mother:  It  is  such  a  curious  coincidence 
that  I  cannot  help  calling  your  attention  to  the  fact  that 
just  seven  months  ago  to-day  I  began  my  military  life  in 
dead  earnest  by  reporting  for  training  at  Plattsburg. 
And  here  I  am  behind  the  lines  along  with  many  other 
Americans  getting  ready  to  make  it  very  unpleasant  for 
the  apostles  of  Kultur,  who  are  now  clearly  preparing  to 
"end  the  war"  again  this  coming  summer.  I  have  kept 
posted  on  the  news,  and  am  aware  that  the  Tuetons  plan 
to  use  Austrian  troops  again  as  they  did  at  Verdun,  on  the 
Western  front.  But  I  think  I  can  say  without  danger 
of  violating  any  military  confidence  that  from  what  I  have 
seen  in  the  short  time  I  have  been  here  of  the  state  of 
preparedness  on  this  side  of  the  Hindenburg  line  I  have 

261 


262  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

no  apprehension  lest  any  new  German  offensive  may 
succeed. 

Curiously  enough,  too,  I  fail  to  descend  to  any  great 
depths  of  despair  over  the  Russo-Rumanian  situation. 
It  is  undeniably  bad,  but  I  do  not  believe  that  the  Huns 
will  be  able  to  organize  the  Russian  resources  for  their 
own  use  to  any  great  extent  for  the  reason  that,  in  the 
nature  of  things,  Russia  must  remain  in  a  state  of  political 
flux  for  some  time  to  come.  And  ultimately,  I  believe,  the 
Russians  will  quit  fighting  among  themselves  and  turn  on 
the  Germans  again.  You  cannot  attribute  my  view  to 
optimism  solely,  for  I  continue  firm  in  the  conviction  that 
the  trend  of  history  making  is  always  in  the  right  direction 
and  cannot  be  reversed,  although  it  may  seem  sometimes 
to  be  arrested. 

From  what  I  note  of  conditions  here  I  judge  that  France, 
instead  of  being  "bled  white,"  has  left  in  her  yet  enough 
strength  and  fight  to  stage  a  world-Thermopylse  should  it 
be  necessary,  and  that  she  has  what  is  much  more  neces- 
sary :  the  will  to  fight  to  the  end.  I  have  seen  some  fine 
specimens  of  French  manhood  doing  guard  duty,  and  it 
goes  without  saying  that  if  there  are  such  men  for  service 
behind  the  lines  they  are  not  lacking  for  the  trenches. 

I  am  in  a  rest  camp  temporarily,  far  behind  the  lines,  but 
the  place  has  the  reality  of  war  about  it.  All  day  you  can 
hear  the  reports  of  great  gun  firing  at  target  and  testing 
work,  and  always  there  are  dirigibles  and  airplanes  circling 
overhead.  These  dirigibles  at  a  distance  produce  the 
uncanny  appearance  of  great  insect  bodies  sweeping  along 
through  the  air  without  wings  to  bear  them  up,  and  you 
keep  looking  for  the  supporting  planes.  The  gas  bags  are 
of  colors  which  make  them  resemble  bodies  of  nice  fat 
giant  moths  in  mottling  as  well  as  in  shape. 

I  am  writing  in  a  long,  low-ceilinged  room  used  as  an 
English  officers'  club.     It  is  very  cozy  and  comfortable, 


In  France  at  Last  263 

with  plenty  of  heat  and  light,  writing  tables  and  wicker 
lounging  chairs  around  the  big  heater  in  the  center. 
Altogether,  I  find  the  living  conditions  much  more  agree- 
able than  the  food,  which  tends  too  much  to  the  bread,  tea 
and  jam  order,  and  too  Uttle  to  meats.  For  this  reason  I 
shall  be  mighty  glad  to  get  back  again  to  the  American 
army  ration. 

While  I  have  been  writing  here  two  British  aviators, 
each  with  a  decoration  of  some  sort,  have  sat  down 
opposite  me  to  do  a  bit  of  writing.  Decorations  are  the 
order  all  around,  and  I  guess  it  will  not  be  long  before 
American  uniforms  will  be  similarly  ornamented. 

The  weather  tends  to  cold  and  crispness,  but  is  very 
pleasant,  and  my  health  is  everything  that  could  be 
desired. 

For  the  present  I  must  close  with  the  repeated  in- 
junction that  you  are  not  to  worry.     Tell that  we 

will  undoubtedly  have  a  Christmas  tree,  and  that  I  will 
hang  her  presents  to  me  on  it.  The  men  are  well,  having 
stood  their  journey  remarkably  well.  I  send  much  love  for 
Dad  and  yourself,  and  regards  to  all  my  friends. 

QUINCY. 

December  13,  1917- 

Dear  Mother  and  Dad:— I  can  certify  to  the  fact 
that  the  English  Channel  deserves  all  the  reputation  it  has 
earned  for  general  rough-and-rowdiness.  Having  crossed 
it  without  being  at  all  seasick  I  suppose  I  can  now  consider 
myself  immune  against  that  malady.  But  it  was  well 
enough  that  someone  wasn't  sick,  for  as  a  rule  every  man 
collapsed  right  where  he  was  and  remained  until  we  hit 
port.  I  wrote  you,  I  believe,  that  on  our  way  across  the 
Atlantic  our  ship  did  pretty  much  everything  but  loop  the 
loop  in  the  air;  well,  I  beheve  the  channel  boat  we  were 


264  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

on  added  that  stunt  as  a  climax.  It  certainly  thought 
nothing  at  all  of  standing  right  upon  end  and  shaking  its 
bow  at  the  zenith.  The  men  are  thanking  their  stars  that 
they  have  no  more  sea  travel  ahead  of  them,  but  no  doubt 
when  they  become  acquainted  with  trench  mud  they  will 
"holler"  to  be  aboard  ship  and  roll  around  in  the  scuppers 
again. 

It  seems  odd  that  the  British  postal  system  accepts  mail 
from  American  soldiers  without  any  charge.  When  we 
landed  in  England  it  cost  us  only  two  cents  to  send  letters 
across  the  ocean  through  the  civil  P.  O.  And  back  in  the 
U.  S.  it  cost  three  cents  to  send  a  letter  merely  across  the 
Hudson  from  Jersey  City  to  New  York.  The  farther 
away  from  home  you  get  the  less  postage  costs  you,  it 
seems ;  but  I  suppose  I  had  best  wait  before  congratulating 
myself  on  this  until  I  find  out  what  the  American  Postal 
arrangements  are  on  this  side.  It  is  an  interesting  fact, 
though,  that  England  has  not  yet  found  it  necessary  to 
increase  postal  rates  while  the  U.  S.  did  so  almost  im- 
mediately on  entering  the  war. 

You  will  be  surprised,  no  doubt,  at  receiving  two  letters 
from  me  dated  so  closely  together,  but  while  I  am  at 
this  rest  camp  I  am  making  use  of  what  may  prove  to  be 
the  last  comfortable  writing  facilities  I  shall  enjoy  for 
some  time.  In  fact,  there  is  nothing  to  do  but  write 
and  loaf,  for  we  are  not  allowed  to  leave  the  military 
reservation.  And  while  it  is  hard  on  us  to  keep  us  from 
sightseeing  it  is  a  good  thing  to  make  us  make  use  of  this 
place  as  a  real  rest  camp,  for  the  whole  outfit  is  travel 
weary  and  has  more  wearying  travel  ahead  of  it.  I  regret 
very  much  that  I  cannot  see  anything  of  this  vicinity. 
There  is  some  compensation  for  staying,  however,  in  the 
fact  that  the  mess  has  improved  greatly,  is  in  fact  much 
less  stinted  than  the  officers'  mess  I  shared  in  England. 
This  tends  to  confirm  me  in  the  view  that  there  is  a  lot  of 


Boche  Illusion  265 

hysterical  economy  in  England.  I  was  inclined  to  believe 
so  when  I  observed  that  while  the  amount  of  money  you 
could  spend  for  food  seemed  to  be  pretty  strictly  regulated 
there  was  nothing  to  keep  you  from  squandering  as  much 
as  you  pleased  on  champagne  during  the  legal  hours  for 
selling  liquors.  False  economy  is  in  some  respects  as  bad 
as  no  economy,  so  I  was  sorry  to  note  this  English 
tendency. 

In  the  matter  of  dress  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  the 
English  women  set  the  American  women  a  very  good 
example.  I  saw  very  little  extravagant  befrilling,  al- 
though I  would  probably  have  found  plenty  in  London  had 
I  gotten  there.  The  English  women  I  saw  wore  simple 
dresses,  low  cut,  low  heel,  sensible  looking  shoes  and 
heavy  stockings  of  the  golf  wool  variety.  I  am  inclined 
to  agree  that  the  English  women  show  better  sense  in  their 
dress  than  do  their  American  sisters.  While  in  England  I 
saw  only  one  woman  exhibiting  the  very  obvious  silk 
stocking  which  has  come  to  be  almost  the  rule  in  our 
country. 

I  have  been  censoring  more  mail  for  the  men  and  one  of 
them  remarked  very  brightly  that  the  only  talk  he  can 
understand  over  here  is  the  dogs',  which  is  just  the  same. 
I  might  add  that  so  is  the  cats'.  We  have  two  cats  here,  a 
white  and  gray  kitten  that  lounges  all  over  the  officers  in 
the  club,  and  a  gray  tiger  that  puts  up  in  the  men's  quar- 
ters and  is  very  French  in  that  he  talks  all  over  himself 
whenever  you  give  him  the  opportunity. 

I  know  it  will  interest  you  to  hear  of  the  experience  of 
one 'of  our  men  who  speaks  German.  He  spoke  to  a 
German  prisoner  and  was  informed  by  the  Boche  in  the 
course  of  their  conversation  that  the  Allies  could  never 
lick  Germany,  that  she  still  has  plenty  of  men.  When  the 
American  asked  the  German  how  long  he  had  been  a 
prisoner  the  answer  was,  "Twenty-nine  months."    And 


266  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

there  you  are !  The  fixed  idea  that  Germany  will  win  has 
been  so  beaten  into  the  German  skull  that  about  the  only 
way  to  let  any  light  into  that  skull  is  to  break  it.  Here 
was  this  fellow,  who  had  been  out  of  Germany  almost 
throughout  the  war,  serene  in  his  conviction  that  every- 
thing must  be  all  right  in  the  Fatherland. 

December  15: — Well,  this  missive  is  being  concluded 
somewhere  else  in  France,  and  maybe  my  next  may  be  be- 
gun still  somewhere  else,  for  I  am  by  no  means  sure  that  we 
have  yet  reached  our  final  abiding  place  for  the  training 
period.  For  several  reasons  I  would  like  to  stay  here, 
though.  Not  only  is  this  locality  most  interesting,  but 
the  sooner  we  get  set  and  stay  that  way,  the  sooner  we  will 
get  letters  from  home.  As  long  as  we  keep  shuttling  here 
and  there  we  cannot  hope  to  get  any  mail,  and  that  is  the 
hardest  part  of  foreign  service.  Officers  whom  we  met 
here  to-day  told  us  that  they  did  not  get  their  first  mail  for 
six  or  or  seven  weeks  after  arriving  on  this  side.  I  trust 
we  shall  have  better  luck.  However,  if  we  are  kept  going 
at  the  same  pace  we  set  right  off  the  bat  to-day — and  I 
hope  we  are — we  will  have  mighty  little  time  to  worry 
about  anything. 

More  than  ever  I  am  convinced  that  the  soldiers  of  the 
Allies  are  doing  the  greatest  work  that  has  ever  been  done. 
And  I  am  surer  than  ever,  if  that  be  possible,  that  if  I  had 
not  undertaken  to  do  what  I  could  in  that  work  I  would 
never  have  been  satisfied  with  myself.  The  closer  I  get 
to  the  firing  line  the  more  enthusiastic  I  am  over  the  job. 

In  spite  of  my  apprehension  that  our  last  quarters  would 
be  the  last  really  comfortable  ones  we  would  have,  we  are 
now  fixed  up  just  about  as  well  as  soldiers  on  active 
service  could  ask  to  be,  and  in  a  most  interesting  place 
about  which  I  will  try  to  write  you  a  little  something  as 
soon  as  I  get  time.     In  haste  and  love,  Quincy. 


Old  Time  Fortress  267 

The  location  from  which  the  latter  part  of  the  above 
letter  was  written  and  which  is  elaborately  described  in 
the  next  was  Fort  de  Peigney,  an  old  stronghold  situated 
about  two  kilometers,  or  a  mile  and  a  quarter,  from  the 
ancient  walled  city  of  Langres,  which  is  situated,  roughly, 
a  hundred  and  fifty  miles  east  by  south  from  Paris.  The 
trip  was  made  in  bitter  cold  weather  in  unheated  coaches. 
The  men  were  not  loaded  on  cattle  cars  as  were  the  French 
soldiers,  but  third  class  carriages  were  provided.  The 
space  on  these  was  painfully  inadequate  and  the  windows 
were  broken.  All  had  to  stand,  jammed  like  sardines 
while  the  cruel  wind  swept  through.  Some  of  the  men 
were  so  frozen  that  they  could  hardly  walk  when  they 
reached  Langres. 

It  should  be  explained  here  that  after  leaving  the 
American  shores  all  distinction  between  the  old  regimental 
officers  and  the  "extras  "  from  Plattsburg  and  other  camps 
had  been  effaced.  Mills  was  placed  regularly  in  charge  of 
a  squad  of  50  men  of  Company  G.  Down  to  the  date  now 
reached  Major  Stanley  expected  to  join  the  rest  of  the 
regiment  at  once.  The  other  battalions  were  sent,  how- 
ever, to  the  Haute  Marne  region  near  Chaumont  and  were 
quartered  in  the  little  village  of  Rimau court.  The  only 
Americans  in  the  Langres  vicinity  besides  the  Second 
Battalion  were  officers  from  scattered  regiments  on 
detached  duty.  Company  G  was  the  only  one  quartered 
in  the  Fort,  the  rest  of  the  battalion  being  housed  in 
the  Turenne  barracks.  Mills  promptly  followed  up  the 
announcement  of  his  arrival : 

December  17,  191 7. 

Dear  Mother:  Well,  well!  And  where  do  you  sup- 
pose I  spent  Christmas?  For  this  will  reach  you  long 
after  the  25th.  No,  not  in  gay  Paree —  not  by  any  means, 
but  in  an  old  stone  fort  somewhere  between  the  Pyrenees 


268  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

and  the  Vosges  which  might  have  been  translated  right  out 
of  the  pages  of  Dumas  for  our  entertainment.  Here  is 
where  we  were  stationed  on  finishing  our  rail  journey, 
and  here  we  are  likely  to  stay  for  part  of  our  training  at 
least.  And  it  is  surely  a  strange  experience  to  these  Iowa 
boys  to  be  set  down  in  a  spot  so  vastly  different  from  their 
native  State  to  walk  guard  on  narrow  drawbridges  and 
lofty  parapets.  There  is  no  grilled  portcullis  to  be 
lowered  at  night  for  them  to  peep  through,  but  there  are 
moats  in  plenty,  deep  and  wide  though  dry,  and  number- 
less subterranean  passageways  through  works  of  earth  and 
stone. 

We  officers  mess  in  a  long,  low  vaulted,  stone  chamber 
illumined  by  old  brass  lamps,  the  property  of  former 
French  garrisons  for  decades.  We  eat  from  trestled  tables, 
sitting  on  trestled  benches,  and  while  our  tableware  is 
mostly  modern  our  coffee  is  poured  from  great  stone 
pitchers  that  might  have  been  in  use,  for  all  their  appear- 
ance, since  before  coffee  was  known  as  a  beverage  in  this 
part  of  the  world.  Our  sleeping  quarters  are  in  another 
vaulted  stone  chamber,  higher  of  ceiling  and  on  an  upper 
floor,  with  a  great  circular  well — which  once  ran  all  the 
way  from  roof  to  cellar  but  is  now  floored  over  with  wood 
at  each  story — piercing  its  centre.  All  floors,  in  court- 
yards or  inner  chambers,  are  of  stone,  and  your  steps 
resound  mightily  in  the  narrow  interior  passage  ways. 

You  are  not  surprised  to  know,  I  am  sure,  that  it  is  hard 
for  me  to  convince  myself  every  morning  that  I  ought  not 
to  be  clamping  on  a  steel  casque  and  girding  myself  with  a 
broadsword  belt  instead  of  putting  on  a  Stetson  service  hat 
and  strapping  on  a  Colt  .45.  Really,  it  would  not  surprise 
me  at  all  for  some  knight  or  retainer  in  coat  of  mail  to  step 
out  of  the  black  recess  of  an  underground  chamber  into  the 
flare  of  my  ultra-modern  electric  flashlight  and  challenge 
me  at  any  time  as  I  go  straying  about  the  deserted  quar- 


American  Good  Humor  269 

ters  of  the  place .  Mysterious  passageways  lead  down  from 
dark  chambers  on  the  wall  tops  through  iron  gratings  and 
blackness  into  the  bowels  of  the  fort.  Just  why  I  haven't 
seen  the  official  ghost  emerge  stealthily  from  one  of  them  I 
do  not  know,  but  I  haven't  given  up  hope  yet. 

I  think  the  men  are  awestruck  somewhat  by  an  environ- 
ment so  different  from  anything  they  had  previously 
known.  They  are  as  interested  as  children  and  every 
bit  as  busy  exploring  when  they  are  not  at  work.  They 
have  had  their  hands  full  cleaning  up,  though,  for  we 
found  the  place  very  dirty  and  had  to  dig  in  for  all  we  were 
worth  to  make  it  habitable.  The  commanding  officer — an 
American — was  amazed  by  the  manner  our  outfit  pitched 
right  in  as  soon  as  it  piled  off  the  train.  "I  never  saw 
anything  like  it,"  he  said.  "Here  you  arrive  at  the  end 
of  a  trip  from  the  U.  S.,  and  after  spending  the  last  two 
nights  on  crowded  railroad  cars  with  practically  no  rest  go 
right  to  work  without  a  word  of  grumbling  from  a  single 
man.  And  what  breakfast  you  got  to  work  on  you 
had  to  scrape  together  the  best  you  could."  His  praise 
was  deserved,  too,  for  the  outfit  certainly  did  come 
through  the  entrance  into  foreign  service  in  a  soldierly 
manner.  The  only  great  drawback  to  our  location  here  is 
the  shortage  of  fuel,  and  we  would  have  met  the  same 
trouble  anywhere  in  France,  I  guess.  We  have  to  scratch 
to  get  enough  wood  to  keep  the  kitchens  going,  and  as  for 
the  living  quarters,  well  we  bundle  up  and  make  the  best  of 
it.  Fortunately  all  my  stuff  came  through  with  me,  so  I 
am  warmly  clothed.  The  blanket  of  snow  two  or  three 
inches  deep  which  covers  the  ground  to-day  indicates 
that  we  will  have  to  keep  on  bundling  up  for  winter 
has  begun. 

This  fort,  which  is  very  interesting  historically,  over- 
looks one  of  those  typical  French  valleys,  pictures  of  which 
you  have  seen  so  often,  with  a  tree-lined  canal  winding 


270  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

through  it,  and  rolling  waves  of  cultivated  fields,  dotted 
with  villages  here  and  there,  stretching  away  on  every 
hand.  Trees  are  few.  On  the  summit  of  another  hill 
some  three  miles  away  stands  an  ancient  French  walled 
town  [Langres],  one  of  the  oldest,  in  which  I  have  no  doubt 
that  I  shall  find  much  to  interest  me  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
Mr.  Rubel  came  back  from  visiting  it  yesterday  much 
disgusted  because  it  had  no  subways  or  Gay  White  Way. 
As  you  know,  a  landscape  is  always  at  its  finest  under  a 
snow  blanket,  and  I  walked  all  around  the  top  of  the  fort 
the  first  thing  in  the  morning  so  I  would  not  miss  an  inch 
of  it.  I  see  copies  of  the  Paris  editions  of  the  New  York 
Herald  and  Chicago  Tribune,  so  I  know  that  you  folks  in 
New  York  are  plowing  through  a  foot  of  snow.  Your 
winter  is  beginning  early. 

As  to  the  coffee  I  told  you  to  mail  me,  don't  bother;  we 
have  plenty  of  good  coffee — good  food  of  every  sort, 
in  fact — now  that  we  are  back  on  American  rations.  The 
only  trouble  is  in  getting  fuel  to  cook  the  food,  and  you 
can't  send  me  a  cord  of  wood  or  a  ton  of  coal  by  either 
express  or  parcels  post. 

By  the  way,  have  a  ride  on  me.  Here  is  a  subway  ticket 
I  found  in  my  clothes,  and  as  there  is  no  likelihood  of  my 
needing  it  right  away  I  pass  it  along  to  you. 

Here  it  is  ii:io  o'clock,  which  means  that  you  folks 
at  home  are  just  starting  the  day,  and  also  that  I  will  be 
rolled  in  my  blankets  some  hours  before  you  and  the  cats 
turn  in  to-night.  Somehow  I  have  never  been  able  to 
catch  up  that  five  hours  we  lost  somewhere  in  the  Atlantic. 
You  know  I  have  a  weakness  for  sleep  anyway. 

I  hope  that  this  finds  you  and  Dad  as  well  as  I  am,  and 
also  as  free  from  worry.  We  are  due  to  begin  right  away 
on  a  hard  course  of  training,  and  all  the  men  will  be  glad. 
They  have  been  inactive  so  long  that  they  are  getting 
stiff.     I  will  write  as  often  as  I  can,  but  the  conditions  are 


Astray  in  the  Snow  271 

not  propitious.  Everybody  crowds  around  one  fire — if  we 
are  lucky  enough  to  have  even  one — and  everybody  but 
myself  talks.     Much  love. 

QUINCY. 

It  will  be  borne  in  mind  that  all  these  letters  have  the 
conventional  date  line  "Somewhere  in  France!"  The 
next  following,  however,  were  written  from  the  Fort  de 
Peigney.     The  old  town  visited  was,  of  course,  Langres : 

December  20,  191 7. 

My  dear  Mother:  You  cannot  imagine  my  delight 
to-day  at  receiving  my  first  mail  since  leaving  the  other 
side,  including  two  of  the  letters  you  mailed  during  my 
first  voyage.  I  cannot  expect  to  receive  for  a  long  time 
any  of  your  recent  letters.  But  it  will  seem  more  like 
Christmas  now  that  I  have  heard  from  home. 

The  weather  has  moderated  considerably,  but  the 
ground  is  still  white  and  I  am  expecting  a  white  Christmas, 
which  will  also  be  strictly  in  keeping  with  the  spirit. 

As  I  sit  here  writing,  the  afternoon  sunlight  is  pouring 
in  through  our  long,  narrow  window,  flooding  the  narrow, 
vaulted  chamber  with  that  ruddy  golden  glow  that  you  see 
so  often  in  the  winter  time.  Altogether,  circumstances 
seem  to  be  doing  their  best  to  repay  me  for  the  way  they 
smote  me  last  night.  I  started  out  from  town  after  dark, 
and  in  a  network  of  roads  naturally  took  the  wrong  one, 
with  the  consequence  that  I  wandered  for  several  hours 
over  the  beautiful  snow-covered  landscape  I  wrote  you 
about  previously.  Take  my  word  for  it,  my  Httle  old 
pocket  flashlight  was  a  friend  in  need.  One  of  the  en- 
listed men  who  lost  his  way  was  not  blessed  with  a  flash- 
light, and  in  consequence  he  didn't  get  home  until  morn- 
ing. He  was  lucky  in  finding  a  place  to  stay  for  the  night, 
for  the  long  distances  you  can  traverse  over  these  roads, 


272  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

with  every  foot  of  land  on  either  hand  under  cultivation 
and  yet  not  a  sign  of  human  habitation,  are  remarkable. 
Where  you  see  isolated  farmhouses  in  the  United  States 
the  country  folk  here  cluster  their  homes  in  little  villages. 

The  old  town  I  visited  is  altogether  the  quaintest  place 
I  have  ever  been  in.  Not  a  house  within  its  walls  but 
appears  to  have  been  there  since  the  Seventeenth  Century. 
Its  crooked  little  thread-needle  streets  wind  every  way 
around  the  terraces,  and  the  tones  that  echo  from  its 
belfries  sound  strangely  mediaeval  and  out  of  tune  with  the 
jangling  of  the  railway  engine  bells  and  the  shrill  squealing 
of  their  whistles  in  the  yards  in  the  valley  below.  I  felt 
very  much  that  I  was  walking  in  the  Middle  Ages,  but 
every  time  a  pretty  French  mademoiselle  clad  in  the  latest 
Paris  modes  turned  a  corner  I  was  jarred  rudely  out  of  my 
reverie.  Yes,  in  spite  of  the  war  there  is  no  dearth  of  well- 
dressed  women.  And  some  of  them  are  very  pretty,  too, 
although  there  is  really  very  little  comfort  in  making  signs 
to  them.  I  am  free  to  state  that  the  smile  language  is 
universal,  however. 

I  had  no  trouble  in  purchasing  at  the  inns,  which  are  as 
antiquated  as  the  town  itself,  all  the  food  I  wanted,  and 
exceedingly  good  food  it  was,  too,  well  cooked  and  of  fine 
flavor.  The  only  dearth  really  notable  is  of  sweets.  For 
dessert  you  get  fruits,  but  little  pastry.  Chocolate  candies 
are  scarce  and  very  high  in  price.  But  no  one  should  kick 
on  our  fare.  The  bread — whole  wheat — is  fine,  much 
better  than  any  of  the  same  sort  I  have  ever  got  hold  of  in 
the  States.  I  hope  that  you  are  as  well  as  when  your 
letters  were  written,  and  Dad  also.  My  love  to  both  of 
you.  QuiNCY. 

December  22,  1917. 

My  dear  Mother:  Here  it  is  only  three  days  until 
Christmas,  and  I  can  scarcely  reaHze  that  we  have  been 


Fairy  Landscape  273 

here  a  week.  We  are  kept  so  busy  that  actually  all  the 
time  I  have  to  myself  is  devoted  to  writing  letters. 

I  have  been  waiting  to  say  something  about  the  country 
until  I  could  get  a  better  idea  of  it,  but  I  have  had  no 
opportunity  to  do  more  observing  than  I  can  manage  from 
the  fort's  walls.  Certainly  the  phrase  "the  pleasant  land 
of  France"  would  describe  this  section  in  a  milder  season, 
,  for  there  is  a  peacefulness  about  the  whole  landscape  that 
simply  puts  you  at  rest.  In  winter  dress  the  landscape  is 
the  most  beautiful  I  have  ever  seen.  First  it  received  a 
coating  of  two  or  three  inches  of  snow;  then  we  had  a 
succession  of  peculiarly  gray  days  when  the  air  was  so 
heavy  with  mist  that  Lieut.  Nelson  lost  his  way  walking 
out  from  town  in  broad  daylight,  and  from  this  mist  every 
stone  and  twig  gathered  a  feathery  white  coating  that 
gave  the  whole  countryside  the  appearance  of  an  immense 
frosted  cake,  like  the  fancy  ones  you  see  in  the  caterers' 
windows,  when  the  sun  shone  out  dimly  on  it  this  morning. 

I  may  say  that  the  sun  has  not  really  shone  since  we 
have  been  in  France,  but  the  half  lights  from  it  produce 
some  marvelous  effects.  The  one  of  yesterday  afternoon 
I  do  not  expect  to  see  outdone  ever.  Looking  across 
toward  the  town  perched  on  the  opposite  hilltop  we  saw  its 
battlements  and  towers  standing  out  vaguely  through  a 
purple  haze  of  the  sort  that  we  used  to  comment  on  so 
often  at  the  Academy  picture  shows,  except  that  this 
coloring,  painted  by  the  hand  of  Nature,  excelled  in 
exquisite  delicacy  anything  that  could  be  produced  by  the 
hand  of  man.  City  and  hill  seemed  some  fairy  mirage, 
right  side  up,  enticing  to  an  enchanted  land.  And  the 
utter  stillness  which  grips  the  entire  country  accentuated 
this  illusion  of  unreality. 

This  quietness  is  the  most  striking  thing  about  France. 
Each  person  is  going  about  his  business  as  unconcernedly 
as  if  there  were  no  war  anywhere  in  the  world.     If  it  were 

IS 


274  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

not  for  the  numbers  of  men  in  uniform  you  see  everywhere 
you  would  think  the  country  was  at  peace.  There  is  none 
of  the  excitement  and  lack  of  control  which  we  have  been 
taught  to  expect  of  the  Gallic  temperament.  Instead,  the 
keynote  of  the  French  character  seems  to  me  to  be  stoicism. 
Nor  is  the  country  grief  stricken  because  of  its  tremendous 
losses,  so  far  as  I  can  tell.  Its  people  seem  to  be  animated 
by  the  ideal:  "For  France!"  It  is  inspiring  to  see  this 
spirit. 

I  have  been  particularly  struck  by  the  fine  physique  of 
all  of  the  French  soldiers  I  have  seen.  Those  we  have 
come  in  contact  with  average  larger  in  stature  than  the 
men  of  our  organization.  And  when  you  look  at  the  size 
of  their  leg  and  arm  muscles,  the  breadth  of  their  shoulders 
and  the  depth  of  their  chests  you  understand  why  the 
Kaiser's  "supermen"  have  been  brought  right  down  to 
earth.  These  Frenchmen  are  finer-looking  specimens  of 
humanity  than  the  English  soldiers,  and  they  are  a  gay 
bunch.  While  women  are  doing  a  great  deal  of  the  work 
here  they  are  by  no  means  doing  it  all.  It  is  nothing 
unusual  to  see  young  men  at  civilian  occupations.  Gener- 
ally speaking,  I  believe  the  country  looks  to  be  better 
worked,  in  respect  to  farming  activities,  than  England. 
In  common  with  the  great  preponderance  of  the  men — 
whose  letters  I  censor — I  like  it  the  better  of  the  two  coun- 
tries. Both  must  be  vastly  different  in  peace  times,  how- 
ever. One  thing  that  has  impressed  me  greatly  is  that  in 
neither  country  do  you  see,  with  rare  exceptions,  auto- 
mobiles or  other  vehicles  on  the  roads  except  those  in  the 
military  service.  This  is  the  outstanding  indication  which 
points  always  to  the  fact  that  the  country  is  at  war. 

So  far  as  I  can  see  no  one  here  is  suffering  for  want  of 
necessary  food,  although  the  luxuries  come  pretty  high. 
Butchers'  and  grocery  shops  seem  well  stocked  and  patron- 
ized, and  no  one  looks  pinched  for  want  of  a  full  stomach. 


Christmas  Town  275 

As  for  ourselves,  we  are  faring  royally.  For  one  thing,  we 
have  biscuits — and  good  ones,  too—  at  almost  every  meal. 
This  is  the  first  time  I've  enjoyed  this  Southern  luxury 
since  I  left  home  to  go  to  New  York.  And  the  butter  we 
melt  on  them  is  ' '  the  best  butter ' '  and  the  syrup  we  "  sop  " 
them  in  is  the  best  syrup — officially  known  in  army  circles 
as  "larrup"— that  is  to  be  obtained.  No  one  need 
sympathize  with  us  on  the  food  question,  that's  sure. 
With  much  love  to  Dad  and  yourself,  Quincy. 

P.S.  I  might  mention  here  that  I  have  made  an  allot- 
ment from  my  pay  to  be  sent  to  you  every  month,  begin- 
ning with  December.  You  will  receive  the  first  install- 
ment some  time  in  January,  or,  if  you  do  not,  communi- 
cate with  the  War  Department  and  find  out  what  the 
hitch  is.  I  want  you  to  use  this  money  in  theatre-going 
and  enjoying  life.  I  do  not  need  it;  in  fact  there  is  no 
opportunity  to  spend  over  here,  and  I  have  no  doubt  that 
I  will  be  sending  additional  sums  home  from  time  to  time. 
Do  not  save  this  money,  for  I  think  it  will  be  much  better 
invested  in  whatever  will  occupy  your  mind  and  keep  you 
from  worrying— in  which  there  is  no  use — and  this  applies 
to  Dad  as  well  as  yourself. 

With  much  love  to  both  of  you,  Quincy. 

December  25,  1917. 

Dear  Mother  and  Dad  :  Of  all  the  lands  I've  been  in 
— not  that  they've  been  so  many  at  that — or  shall  be  in 
ever,  I  am  sure  that  this  is  the  real  Christmas  land.  The 
whole  country,  as  I  see  it  to-day  from  the  walls  of  the  fort 
here,  lies  before  me  like  a  great  Christmas  card.  It  is  the 
original  of  all  the  little  snow  scenes  with  which  all  the  cards 
you  have  ever  bought  for  this  season  have  been  decorated. 
The  windows  of  the  town  on  the  hill  opposite  sparkle  in  the 
half-sunlight  like  the  tinsel  decorations  on  the  cards  that 


276  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

you  have  sent  and  received  to-day.  With  its  walled 
exterior  and  its  snow-covered  roofs,  you  feel  that  this  is  not 
a  real  town  but  just  a  Christmas  town  put  there  to  cheer 
us  with  the  Christmas  spirit. 

And,  while  I  have  seen  no  holly  over  here,  France  is 
surely  the  country  for  mistletoe.  Trees  are  few,  but  the 
proportion  of  those  decorated  with  huge  clusters  of  this 
romantic  parasite  is  simply  amazing.  Never  have  I  seen 
mistletoe  of  such  luxuriant  growth  anywhere  else,  but  I 
have  not  had  any  view  close  enough  to  see  whether  it  is  as 
prolific  in  berries  as  our  smaller  American  variety.  Per- 
haps there  is  some  relation  between  the  profusion  of 
French  mistletoe  and  the  reputed  warmth  of  the  feminine 
temperament  here,  but  if  so  I  am  still  waiting  for  the 
demonstrations  of  said  temperament.  Most  of  the  girls 
I  have  seen  have  been  pretty  much  the  same  as  American 
girls  in  all  respects.  They  are  far  prettier  than  the  English 
girls — which  is  some  compensation  for  having  to  stay  here. 

I  have  devoted  a  large  part  of  the  day  to  censoring  mail. 
The  men  are  writing  barrels  of  it,  and  while  reading  it  is 
really  a  laborious  task  for  us  officers  we  do  not  feel  like 
limiting  them  because  their  letter  writing  is  such  an 
obvious  outlet  for  their  loneliness.  When  they  begin  to 
hear  from  home  regularly  they  will  write  less  themselves. 
But  they  are  now  much  more  isolated  than  are  their 
homefolk,  who  surely  must  have  received  some  of  the 
messages  we  sent  back  en  route.  This  thing  of  being  cut 
off  from  communication  with  those  we  left  behind  is,  and 
will  always  be  even  when  we  go  into  action,  the  feature 
of  warfare  that  preys  most  on  our  minds.  The  men 
write  cheerfully  enough  about  themselves — and  they  are 
experiencing  nothing  that  soldiers  should  complain  of — 
but  when  it  comes  to  the  mail  subject  they  get  importu- 
nate and  beg  everybody  they  know  to  write  to  them. 
Which  explains  the  great  volume  of  Jetters  going  out  now» 


Soldier's  Ideas  277 

While  the  job  of  censoring  involves  a  lot  of  work  I  find 
much  to  interest  me  in  it,  too.  You  have  to  smile  at  the 
fashion  in  which  these  men  speak  well  enough  of  France 
until  they  commence  comparing  it  with  the  U.  S.  and  then, 
as  one  put  it,  they  "wouldn't  swap  the  State  of  Iowa  for 
all  the  land  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic."  To  another's 
way  of  thinking,  "the  sun  never  shines  on  any  land  but 
the  good  old  U.  S.  A,"  this  comment  being  prompted  by 
the  prevailing  fogs  we  have  encoimtered  in  England  and 
France.  One  chap  who  hasn't  heard  from  his  girl  yet  has 
threatened  "to  eat  fish  hooks  and  die"  if  she  doesn't  take 
her  pen  in  hand  and  express  tender  sentiments  toward 
him.  "Ican't  tell  you  where  I  am  because  I  don't  know," 
wrote  another;  "ain't  it  a  helluva  note  when  a  fellow  don't 
know  where  he's  at?"  "I'm  not  worrying  about  getting 
back  to  the  old  U.  S.  A,"  declared  one  more,  "but  I  wish 
to  God  I  could  walk,  instead  of  ride  on  that  damned  boat." 
Ocean  travel  is  not  very  popular  with  the  i68th.  "I 
haven't  seen  a  girl  with  silk  stockings  on  since  leaving  the 
States.  America  for  mine!"  confesses  one.  This  would 
seem  to  indicate  that  the  theory  upon  which  the  American 
young  woman  dresses  may  not  be  entirely  erroneous.  "I 
didn't  hang  up  my  stocking,"  writes  a  wag,  "for  fear  Old 
Santa  would  leave  me  a  steel  helmet  and  a  new  pick  and 
shovel." 

The  men  are  cheerful,  admirably  so,  joking  over  dis- 
comforts at  which  not  one  of  them  but  would  have  re- 
belled in  civilian  life.  So  far  as  discomforts  can  be 
minimized,  they  are,  of  course,  and  I  am  surprised  that 
conditions  are  so  good  considering  that  w^e  are  living  in  the 
field  in  actual  time  of  war.  But  just  the  same  the  men 
would  rather  by  all  sorts  of  odds  be  back  in  old  I-o-way, 
and  they  write  in  unison  that  they  sure  do  want  to  get  at 
those  Boches  and  give  them  hell  for  bringing  good  Ameri- 
cans out  of  God's  country  on  such  a  jaunt  as  this.     As 


278  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

they  put  it  they're,  "just  raring  to  get  at  Fritz."  That's 
the  sort  of  "peace  on  earth,  good  will  to  men"  spirit  that 
pervades  this  ancient  pile  to-day.  The  men  didn't  really 
hate  the  Germans  before  they  came  over  here;  they  do 
now.  Remarkable  what  a  fine  boomerang  the  Kaiser 
constructed  for  himself  in  Frightfulness.  The  process 
of  "beaning"  himself  with  said  weapon  may  be  slow,  but 
it  will  prove  sure. 

I  did  not  attend  church  this  morning,  but  I  celebrated 
the  day  even  more  formally;  I  made  it  a  real  feast  day  by 
taking  a  bath,  the  first  I've  had  since  arriving  in  France. 
To  get  it  I  had  to  have  my  striker  bring  in  two  big  fifteen 
gallon  galvanized  iron  buckets,  each  half  full  of  hot  water, 
in  one  of  which  I  stood,  washing  out  of  the  other.  If  I 
walk  to  town  I  can  get  a  bath  at  the  hospital — and  a 
dated  certificate  to  prove  that  once  I  was  really  clean — but 
I  haven't  had  much  relish  for  walking  that  town  road  after 
the  way  I  stumbled  all  over  the  map  of  France  the  night  I 
lost  my  way.  Anyway,  I'm  clean  now;  but  baths  come 
around  just  about  as  often  as  Christmasses  in  this  country. 

Well,  God  bless  you  folks  at  home — and  the  loving  ones 
at  Statesville ! 

Just  as  I  was  about  to  write  this  morning  that  Santa 
could  have  brought  no  load  so  welcome,  had  he  come  to 
Fort  [de  Peigney],  as  a  bunch  of  mail  sacks,  the  mail  call 
blew,  and  you  should  have  heard  the  yell  of  delight 
that  rang  out  of  the  barracks.  A  mob  of  wild  men  in 
uniform  followed  it  out  into  the  courtyard,  ran  right 
on  over  the  bugler  and  would  have  torn  the  mailbags  to 
pieces  if  a  guard  hadn't  been  put  over  them.  Christmas 
mail!  Real  Christmas  mail!  And  it  brought  me  your 
(Mother's)  letter  mailed  November  25,  yours  and  Dad's 
letters  of  November  29,  Sweet's  Christmas  card  (a  real 
cute  one  it  is,  too)  postmarked  December  4,  a  letter 
from  M.L.  and  The  Evening  Sun  editorial  pages  for  the 


Christmas  Smoker  279 

week  I  left  home.  What  a  fine  Christmas  present  from 
all  of  you.  I  am  so  glad  to  know  that  you  received  in 
advance  the  reassurance  I  hoped  you  would  get  regarding 
my  safe  departure  and  voyage.  And  I  am  so  thankful  to 
know  that  both  you  and  Dad — I  can't  get  out  of  the  habit 
of  writing  in  the  singular  instead  of  the  plural — are  both  so 
well  and  sensible.  Don't  worry,  ever;  it  is  uncalled  for 
and  useless.  I'm  sorry  you,  Mother,  went  down  to  the 
ferry  the  day  I  left.  I  delivered  your  good  wishes  to  the 
gentlemen  you  named ;  Uncle  Sam  presented  Mr.  Nelson 
with  a  Christmas  present  in  the  shape  of  a  i  st  Lieutenancy, 
by  the  way,  and  all  asked  to  be  remembered  to  both 
of  you. 

I  never  expect  to  be  more  fully  exhausted  than  I  was 
that  sailing  day.  But  my  stateroom  on  the  boat  was  a 
luxury,  and  I  recuperated  speedily  after  some  hours  of 
continuous  sleep.  Am  getting  lots  of  sleep  here,  and  am 
just  as  tough  physically  and  as  mean  as  anybody  needs  to 
be  to  go  Fritz-hunting.  No,  "my  friend"  the  dog  didn't 
come  along.  Suppose  he's  still  hanging  around  Gover- 
nor's Island. 

Taking  it  by  and  large,  with  censoring  letters,  bathing 
up,  target  practice  and  instructing  the  men,  this  has  been  a 
pretty  active  Christmas,  with  Turkey  and  "fixins"  for 
dinner  and  a  smoker,  the  fuel  furnished  by  The  Sun  to- 
bacco fund,  to  finish  the  day.  The  men  got  ten  packages 
of  tobacco  and  several  packs  of  cigarettes  apiece ;  it  was  a 
real  boon  to  them.  I  had  the  pleasure  of  formally  present- 
ing the  smokes  in  behalf  of  The  Sun's  readers.     Much  love. 

QUINCY. 

,  France, 


December  29,  1917. 
Dear  Mother:  We  are  resting  up  a  bit  to-day  after 
Considerable  of  a  manoeuver  yesterday,  and  the  rest  is  not 


28o  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

amiss  for  I'll  assure  you  that  clambering  around  over 
rough  ground  through  about  a  foot  of  snow  isn't  the  easiest 
thing  in  the  world,  particularly  when  you're  packing  loads 
of  weapons  and  ammunition  up  and  down  steep  hills. 
One  good  thing:  I'm  certainly  warm  enough  with  all  the 
sweaters  and  helmets  and  mittens  you  provided  for  me. 
My  feet  are  warm  too,  for  I  keep  them  in  heavy  boots  two 
sizes  too  large  for  me — all  the  extra  space  being  occupied 
by  two  pairs  of  those  extra  heavy  woolen  socks — which 
lace  nearly  to  my  knees,  their  uppers  taking  the  place  of 
leggings.  That  sheepskin  coat  is  the  most  valuable  thing 
I  purchased.  I  wear  it  all  the  time  except  when  I  sleep, 
and  it  keeps  me  as  warm  as  toast.  And  when  I  shuck  it 
off  and  crawl  into  Bill  Gramer's  sleeping  bag  every  night 
I  find  the  temperature  equally  comfortable.  I  am  most 
fortunate  in  being  so  thoroughly  equipped;  in  fact  I  do 
not  know  any  other  officer  who  is  as  well  fitted  out  as  I  am. 
The  cold  here  is  steadier  than  the  New  York  brand,  and 
I  believe  that  the  thermometer  average  is  much  lower,  but 
it  is  a  dry  cold  that  you  do  not  notice.  There  is  none  of 
the  rawness  that  strikes  you  to  the  marrow  in  the  wind- 
swept canyons  of  Manhattan.  Being  on  the  weather 
subject  I  will  dilate  some  more  at  this  point  on  the  beau- 
ties of  this  country.  The  weather  is  the  most  remarkable 
I  have  ever  encountered  in  respect  to  the  fact  that,  while 
the  days  are  almost  uniformly  gray  with  the  sun  breaking 
through  only  rarely,  the  nights  are  almost  always  clear, 
with  the  brightest  moonlight  I  have  ever  seen  and  the  stars 
shining  like  jewels.  In  the  white  moonlight  the  snow 
sparkles  like  diamond  chips  on  ground,  trees  and  buildings, 
and  walking  at  night  is  a  delight  to  the  eye.  In  spite  of 
my  experience  in  getting  lost  on  the  town  road  that  dark 
night  I  have  been  rambling  around  alone  over  the  country- 
side at  night  just  because  the  moonHght  is  too  wonderful 
to  go  inside  and  leave  it  to  go  to  waste. 


War  and  Wintertime  281 

Speaking  of  yesterday's  work,  we  are  busy  learning  to 
use  automatic  rifles,  grenades  and  other  weapons.  I  have 
very  Httle  trouble  in  familiarizing  myself  with  these  and 
am  becoming  a  pretty  keen  shot  with  the  automatic  pistol. 
I  just  imagine  I  see  a  helmet  spike  atop  of  the  can  I  am 
aiming  at — and  it's  good-night  can!  After  yesterday's 
problem  I  can  understand  why  neither  side  attempts — 
as  a  rule — any  extensive  operations  in  winter.  A  man, 
laden  down  as  he  has  to  be  in  going  over  the  top,  is  handi- 
capped by  the  slippery  footing  and  his  progress  is  likely 
to  be  so  slow  that  the  other  fellow  in  the  trench  will  beat 
him  to  the  solution  of  the  problem.  My  wonder  increases 
that  the  Russian  troops  were  able  to  make  the  progress 
they  did  in  the  snowbound  Caucasus.  They  must  have 
been  operating  against  troops  vastly  inferior  in  both 
morale  and  equipment. 

Speaking  of  the  amount  of  stuff  a  fighting  man  has  to 
carry,  I  felt  as  chock  full  of  death  and  destruction  when 
I  went  forward  yesterday  as  the  tarantula  and  the  rat 
each  bragged  about  being  in  their  famous  battle,  as 
narrated  by  Archie  the  Cockroach,  per  old  Don  Marquis. 
I  finished  my  Christmas  letter  early  in  the  day  in  order  to 
get  it  into  the  mail,  and  so  couldn't  narrate  all  the  circum- 
stances of  the  evening,  the  main  feature  of  which  was  a 
concert  by  a  band  organized  by  a  number  of  men  from  the 
company,  with  instruments  they  brought  from  the  States. 
I  assure  you  they  rendered  fearful  and  wonderful  music, 
but  we  had  a  real  jollification,  and  there  is  another 
scheduled  for  New  Year's.  I  have  intended  to  comment 
also  on  the  fact  that  although  the  interior  walls  of  this 
fortification  are  of  stone  we  have  some  snoring  experts 
who  can  bore  right  through  them — and  I  am  one  of  the 
heaviest  calibered  of  the  bunch. 

You  asked  me  what  sort  of  present  I  bought  myself  with 
your  Xmas  donation.     I  haven't  spent  it  yet — in  fact 


282  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

I  spend  hardly  any  money  at  all  now — but  you  may  rest 
assured  that  I  will  invest  it  when  I  get  to  Paris,  Or  may- 
be I'll  let  you  buy  m^e  another  pair  of  heayy  boots  with  it 
before  then.  While  I  think  of  it,  I  want  you  to  be  sure 
to  let  me  know  whether  you  have  to  pay  any  postage  on 
my  letters  and  whether  they  are  ever  censored.  As  we 
understand  it,  letters  addressed  as  mine  are  now  will  be 
delivered  free  of  postage.  And,  so  far  as  we  know,  we  do 
all  the  censoring  that  is  done  on  them.  I  am  particularly 
anxious  to  know  whether  the  letters  I  sent  you  from  Eng- 
land were  censored.  I  have  a  presentiment  that  the  one 
I  wrote  on  the  boat  did  not  get  past  the  British  censor 
in  toto,  although  there  was  nothing  in  it  that  should  not 
have  passed. 

I  haven't  told  you  before  about  our  cat,  which  lives 
in  the  recesses  of  the  fort  and  has  a  short  tail  just  like 
Sweet.  It  is  a  very  fat  and  very  indifferent  feline.  It  has 
come  to  me  several  times  after  some  wheedling  but  does 
not  seem  to  care  for  attention.  So  far  as  I  have  been  able 
to  observe,  it  does  not  depend  on  the  kitchen  for  a  bite, 
being  a  true  huntsman  cat  and  preferring  to  live  on  game, 
of  which  there  is  certainly  plenty  around.  It  is  a  white  cat 
with  gray  spots,  its  color  scheme  being  such  as  to  provide 
it  with  natural  camouflage  which  assists  it  in  hunting. 

And  I  must  not  neglect  to  state  that  that  fruit  cake 

of  's  certainly  was  a  Christmas  blessing.     I  kept  it 

carefully  in  my  trunk  until  the  day  arrived  and  then  cut  it. 
Half  of  it  was  devoured  on  Christmas  day  and  the  other 
half  is  being  held  for  New  Year's  Day.  It  kept  fine,  being 
neither  too  wet  nor  too  dry,  just  right  in  fact.  Our  mess 
continues  good,  so  good  that  I  feel  no  desire  to  go  to  town 
for  meals.  Have  been  in  but  once  yet,  and  hardly  think  it 
likely  that  my  average  will  be  more  than  one  visit  in  two 
weeks  while  in  training.  Not  that  I  can't  go  pretty  much 
whenever  I  want  to,  but  there  is  so  much  to  learn  that  I 


Lombardy  Poplars  283 

don't  feel  justified  in  loafing.  Am  in  the  best  of  health 
and  spirits  and  want  to  hear  a  report  that  you  are  both 
the  same.     With  lots  of  love  for  Dad  and  yourself, 

QUINCY. 

January  i,  1918. 

My  dear  Parents  :  You  see,  I  am  beginning  the  New 
Year  right  by  writing  to  you.  I  must  also  pen  a  letter 
to-day  without  fail  to  old  Bill  Gramer  thanking  him  for  the 
tobacco  he  donated  to  the  company  for  Christmas.  Be- 
cause The  Sun's  tobacco  fund  donation  was  so  large,  I 
held  the  Gramer  bunch  for  a  New  Year's  eve  smoker,  and 
last  night  we  combined  it  with  several  other  packages 
sent  by  Iowa  people  and  had  another  big  time.  The 
combined  gifts  made  an  allowance  of  three  cigars,  several 
packages  of  Bull  Durham,  Tuxedo,  etc.,  and  cigarettes  per 
man.  As  the  men  have  not  yet  received  their  November 
and  December  pay  they  are  clean  strapped,  and  if  it  were 
not  for  these  gifts  they  would  be  just  about  starving  for 
the  soldier's  one  indispensable  luxury,  tobacco.  Their 
friends  did  them  even  a  kinder  turn  than  they  knew  in 
sending  them  these  presents. 

More  snow  and  hoar  frost,  so  a  little  more  "mirating," 
to  use  Manlius  Watts's  great  word,  over  the  beauties  of 
this  coimtry  is  in  order.  On  the  skyline  all  around  us  are 
rows  of  those  Lombardy  poplars  which  are  so  beautiful 
anyw^here,  but  which  are  more  pleasing  to  the  eye  here 
than  elsewhere  because  they  appear  natural  details  of  the 
landscape.  You  have  no  idea  what  a  striking  sight  they 
make  standing  out,  their  bare  branches  coated  white  with 
snow  and  frost,  against  the  dull  gray  of  the  sky.  With  the 
sunshine  to  accentuate  their  whiteness  and  to  intensify  the 
leaden  hue  of  their  cloud-curtain  background,  these  trees 
seem  like  great  growths  of  coral  rising  right  out  of  the 
ground. 


284  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

The  thicker  the  snow  coverlet,  the  more  beautiful  this 
old  fort  becomes.  As  it  stood  before  the  snow  fell  it 
reminded  you  of  the  fortifications  pictured  in  the  movies; 
now,  if  you  did  not  know  of  the  masses  of  earth  and  stone 
underneath  the  snow  covering  you  would  expect  to  see  the 
whole  structure  melt  away  with  the  warming  up  of  the  sun 
in  the  spring.  No  melting  would  be  anticipated  at  any 
early  date,  however,  for  as  one  of  the  men  put  it  in  a  letter 
home :  ' '  Sunny  France — sunny  hell ! ' ' 

The  deeper  the  snow  gets  the  more  I  congratulate  myself 
over  my  sheepskin  coat  and  my  great  heavy,  waterproof 
boots,  although  the  latter  do  make  me  go  "galumphing" 
around  as  if  I  weighed  as  much  as  an  elephant.  To  hear 
me  walking  down  one  of  these  narrow  corridors  you  would 
think  I  was  a  whole  police  force  on  the  march,  the  stone 
walls  and  ceilings  re-echo  the  sound  so.  By  the  way, 
before  I  forget  it,  I  have  been  eating  at  the  same  table  with 
four  other  North  Carolinian  reserve  officers,  one  of  whom, 
Sykes  by  name,  is  from  Charlotte.  These  are  some  of  the 
men  who  were  sent  over  immediately  at  the  close  of  the 
first  training  camps  for  further  study  here.  I  wish  now 
that  I  had  been  sent  over  with  them.  These  men  have 
been  moving  about  from  school  to  school  with  the  result 
that  their  mail  has  been  just  about  one  jump  behind  them 
all  the  time,  so  that  they  have  been  almost  entirely  out  of 
communication  with  their  homes.  The  man  who  sits 
at  the  place  next  to  mine  tells  me  he  has  received  just  three 
letters  since  arriving  in  October,  and  mail  is  a  sore  subject 
with  him.  In  this  respect,  at  any  rate,  I  am  luckier  than 
he.  And — another  "by  the  way" — you  remember  oirr 
favorite  Col.  Heeza  Liar  of  the  animated  movie  cartoons, 
don't  you?  Well,  just  bear  him  in  mind  and  I'll  tell  you 
something  very  interesting  about  him. 

"  I  see  by  the  papers  "  that  while  we  are  engrossed  in  the 
more  intimate  personal  details  of  history  making  over  here 


Starving  for  Mail  285 

there  is  some  history  making  in  the  large  going  on  back  in 
America,  viz:  the  taking  over  of  the  railroads  by  the 
Government.  I  sincerely  trust  that  this  step  has  not 
been  rendered  necessary  by  the  disloyalty  of  organized 
labor.  Government  ownership  or  management  would 
spike  any  strike  plot,  of  course,  by  making  the  strikers 
guilty  of  treason.  I  wish  that  you  would  keep  me  posted 
on  political  conditions  at  home,  not  only  in  regard  to 
international  and  national  aspects  but  also  in  regard  to  the 
way  Hylan  starts  out  at  City  Hall. 

The  men  are  very  wisely  sending  their  ' '  Happy  Easter ! " 
greetings  to  their  folks  now,  so  I  will  take  a  tip  from  them 
and  send  mine  to  you  and  all  my  friends  and  "folks," 
especially  the  home  people  at  Statesville.  With  much 
love  for  all    including  the  feline  department, 

QUINCY. 

January  6,  191 8. 

Dear  Mother:  The  company  typewriter  isn't  work- 
ing, so  here  goes  to  see  whether  I've  forgotten  entirely  how 
to  tickle  the  keys.  No  doubt  I'll  find  my  fingers  less 
nimble,  for  when  the  hand  gains  in  cunning  in  one  direction 
it  must  of  necessity  lose  a  bit  in  the  other. 

I  can't  conscientiously  say  that  this  is  drawing  to  "the 
end  of  a  perfect  day,"  for  two  separate  and  distinct  motor 
trucks  have  come  charging  across  the  drawbridge  loaded 
up  with  mail — and  all  that  I  received  was  The  Evening  Sun 
editorial  page  clippings  for  the  first  week  after  our  initial 
start  across  the  pond  back  in  October.  They  are  welcome, 
but  I  haven't  had  a  letter  since  Christmas  Day,  and  what  I 
want  is  Real  Mail. 

We  were  spoiled  by  having  our  first  batch  of  letters 
delivered  to  us  so  promptly,  and  now  that  we  are  running 
up  against  the  same  sort  of  luck  that  beset  everybody  who 
preceded  us,  we're  taking  it  pretty  hard.     The  consign- 


286  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

ment  of  mail  that  arrived  to-day  consisted  almost  entirely 
of  Christmas  packages  bearing  postmarks,  some  of  them, 
as  far  back  as  October.  About  the  only  comfort  they 
brought  me  was  the  encouragement  to  hope  that  the 
McElwees'  Christmas  box  may  yet  reach  me.  I  am 
endeavoring  to  be  as  amiable  as  possible  under  the  cir- 
cumstances, but  my  disposition  does  smack  at  times  of 
the  ' '  British-colonel-after- twenty-years'-service-in-India  " 
sort  Pollock  used  to  accuse  me  of  at  Plattsburg. 

While  there  have  been  several  reasons — of  a  military 
nature  which  I  cannot  explain — for  some  mix-up  in  our 
mail  service,  I  do  not  see  that  there  is  any  excuse  for  its 
remaining  paralyzed  so  long.  From  men  who  went 
through  this  sort  of  thing  last  summer,  and  are  at  last 
hearing  from  home  pretty  regularly,  I  learn  that  while  the 
mail  in  this  direction  may  be  interrupted  there  is  seldom 
any  interruption  in  the  stream  of  letters  which  you  send 
back  the  other  way.  I  am  relieved  to  feel  reasonably 
certain  that  my  letters  are  reaching  you  O.K.,  for  while  I 
know  I'm  all  right,  you  don't.  Mail  is  a  pretty  bad  thing 
to  lack,  but  I  thank  God  there  has  been  no  trouble  yet  with 
the  delivery  of  food.  Our  rations  are  certainly  all  that 
could  be  desired,  we  have  good  dry  shelter  for  officers  and 
men,  and  the  sick  list  is  nothing  like  as  large  as  might  have 
been  anticipated,  considering  all  the  circumstances. 

Latterly  we  have  been  having  more  wood,  and  have  been 
keeping  warmer.  And  the  problem  of  light  has  been 
solved  by  the  introduction  of  a  gasolene  burning  lamp 
which  generates  its  own  gas  from  the  liquid,  and  then  burns 
that  gas  in  a  mantle.  The  light  is  very  clear  and  white, 
and  is  produced  at  a  minimum  of  cost.  Nor  is  there  any 
danger  connected  with  it.  The  stoves  are  somewhat  like 
the  first  sheet  iron  one  you  saw  in  my  tent  at  Governor's 
Island,  but  better.  At  that,  they're  not  so  much  better, 
for  we  have  nicknamed  them  "one-man  stoves."     The 


Study  in  Footgear  287 

name  is  easily  explained.  What  with  the  green  wood  we 
have  to  burn  in  them  it  takes  about  all  one  man's  time  to 
keep  one  going.  If  you're  right  on  the  job  after  getting 
a  nice  bed  of  coals  formed,  you're  all  right,  but  if  you're 
just  a  minute  late  about  replenishing  the  fuel  you're  "out 
of  luck,"  as  they  say  in  the  army.  However,  if  I  am  as 
comfortably  provided  for  all  the  time  I'm  in  the  service  I'll 
be  more  than  lucky — even  if  I  do  have  to  stop  here  and  doc- 
tor the  fire  in  that  gosh-hanged  sheet  iron  mule.  That's 
better,  so  I  can  go  on  with  my  letter  writing  without  fear 
of  freezing. 

I  got  as  much  fun  out  of  buying  a  pair  of  shoes  yesterday 
as  you  would  at  a  comic  opera.  The  shopkeeper,  his  wife 
and  his  daughter  all  took  turns  at  trying  to  effect  the  deal, 
and  then  they  joined  forces  and  tried  all  together,  all 
talking,  gesticulating  and  smiling  at  once.  When  I  finally 
signified  that  I  would  take  the  shoes  all  three  nearly 
collapsed  from  exhaustion.  The  father  produced  an 
expansive  handkerchief  and  mopped  his  face,  the  mother 
flopped  into  a  chair  and  fanned  herself  energetically;  the 
daughter  was  the  only  one  of  the  three  who  had  strength 
left  to  do  up  the  package. 

I  might  state  that  these  are  some  shoes,  being  built  of 
rawhide,  and  having  soles  nearly  half  an  inch  thick  upon 
which  are  affixed  numerous  spikes,  which  we  know  as  hob- 
nails but  which  the  French  call,  much  more  appropriately, 
' '  talons. ' '  I  have  had  these  shoes  oiled  so  that  they  are  as 
waterproof  as  my  boots,  and  I  am  now  ready  for  the 
trenches,  so  far  as  footgear  goes.  There  remains  much 
other  preparing  to  be  done,  of  course,  which  will  take  a 
great  deal  of  time  if  the  programme  is  carried  out  as  laid 
down,  and  as  it  should  be. 

But  this  is  aside  from  the  point  that  my  new  shoes  cost 
me  $12,  and  I'd  have  paid  several  times  that  price  rather 
than  go  without  them.     If  you've  got  good  heavy  water- 


288  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

tight  shoes,  big  enough  to  permit  you  to  wear  three  pair 
of  heavy  wool  socks,  you're  not  going  to  be  bothered  by 
either  cold  feet  or  sickness. 

I  can  get  along  over  here  without  the  new  gold  shoulder 
bars  that  have  been  authorized  for  second  lieutenants,  but 
I  couldn't  get  along  without  the  heavy  footgear,  heavy 
clothes  and  heavy  bedding.  The  idea  of  decorating  the 
lieutenants,  first  or  second,  with  gold  bars  for  the  lower 
rank  and  silver  bars  for  the  higher  is  not  a  bad  one  so  long 
as  said  lieutenant  is  to  be  paraded,  for  the  uniform  of  the 
American  officer  has  been  found  too  severely  plain  for 
practical  purposes.  The  gilt  bar  is  similar  to  the  silver 
bar  which  has  long  been  worn  by  the  first  lieutenants. 
Gold  for  the  lower  rank  and  silver  for  the  higher  may  seem 
a  trifle  out  of  keeping,  but  it  is  according  to  army  prece- 
dent. The  major  wears  a  gold  leaf,  the  lieutenant-colonel  a 
silver  one.  Some  of  these  days  when  I  go  on  leave,  I  may 
have  occasion  to  wear  the  new  insignia,  but  none  are 
available  over  here  now,  and  the  only  second  lieutenants 
who  are  wearing  them  are  the  new  arrivals  who  have  left 
the  States  since  the  new  order  was  issued. 

I  suppose  that  by  the  time  you  receive  this  you  will 
have  the  flock  of  New  Year  cards  I  mailed  you.  I  inclose 
two  more  cards  with  the  request  that  you  complete  ad- 
dresses, add  stamps  and  forward  them  to  their  destina- 
tions. I  know  you  would  have  been  interested,  shopping 
with  me  when  I  purchased  these  cards.  The  shop  people 
had  a  regular  menagerie  consisting  of  two  large,  sleepy- 
eyed  cats  of  the  general  color  scheme  of  Cinnamon,  and  a 
rather  antiquated  rat  terrier.  If  you  wanted  to  start 
something  all  you  had  to  do  was  pet  the  cats  while  the  dog 
was  looking,  and  he  straightway  sent  up  a  wail  to  heaven. 
He  was  so  jealous  of  those  cats  that  if  I  made  a  move 
toward  them  he  got  in  my  road.  It  was  quite  a  comical 
little  show.     And,  besides,  the  girl  who  sold  me  the  post- 


As  to  Double  Socks  289 

cards  was  "real  pretty,"  so  the  time  I  spent  there  was  by 
no  means  wasted. 

I  have  finally  made  very  good  friends  with  the  short- 
tailed  cat  here  at  the  fort,  but  it  does  not  care  for  too  much 
familiarity,  never  allowing  itself  to  be  taken  up  off  the 
ground,  and  never  desiring  to  come  into  my  quarters.  It 
believes  in  giving  soldiers  generally  a  pretty  wide  berth, 
but  less  because  of  having  been  maltreated  than  because 
it  comes  of  wild  stock,  I  think. 

We  hear  that  there  are  ninety  carloads  of  mail  some- 
where in  France  waiting  for  delivery  to  American  soldiers 
somewhere  else  in  France,  so  it  is  reasonable  to  suppose 
that  I  have  some  letters  waiting  around  to  be  delivered. 

I  stopped  at  this  point  to  do  a  little  job  of  censoring  and 
I'm  here  to  tell  you  that  all  the  men  are  interested  in 
those  ninety  carloads.  Unless  there  is  a  real  letter 
delivery  soon  I  expect  to  see  some  of  the  fellows  try  to 
swim  back  to  dear  old  I-o-way. 

I  had  another  illustration  of  the  smallness  of  the  world 
yesterday  when  a  Dr.  Willard,  a  ist  lieut.  in  the  medical 
corps,  blew  in  to  look  at  the  men's  feet.  He  is  from 
Philadelphia,  and  knows  T.  Grier  Miller.  Dr.  Willard 
had  his  owti  fun  with  the  men,  who  invariably  insist  on 
wearing  their  civilian  sizes  for  military  service,  and  take 
it  as  a  personal  affront  for  anyone  to  suggest  more  room  for 
their  tootsies.  He  went  away  leaving  an  outraged  bunch 
who  had  been  ordered  to  increase  their  shoe  numbers  on  an 
average  two  sizes  per  man.  This  enlarging  of  the  shoe 
gives  each  man  a  chance  to  wear  several  pairs  of  socks  as  I 
do.  If  a  soldier  is  shod  in  this  way  he  will  not  have 
"trench  feet." 

Well,  this  missive  continues  to  ramble  on,  and  I  guess  I 
had  better  cut  it  off  right  here  before  I  wear  the  typewriter 
out.  By  the  time  I  write  you  again  I  hope  that  I  will  be 
able  to  report  the  arrival  of  more  mail.     Anyway,  don't 


290  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

get  discouraged.     Keep  on  writing.     Maybe  I  will  get  a 
whole  sackful  all  of  my  own  some  of  these  fine  days. 
With  much  love  to  Dad  and  yourself,  Quincy. 

January  9,  191 8. 

Dear  Mother  :  Here  are  some  fine  cards  which  are  also 
faithful  representations  of  the  sort  of  men  we  see  in  the 
French  uniform.  The  more  I  see  of  them  the  surer  I  am 
that  all  this  "bled  white"  stuff  about  France  is  being 
circulated  by  German  agents. 

I  am  too  busy  to  write  a  mid-week  letter  this  week,  and 
am  sending  these  cards  instead.  And  it  may  be  that  I 
will  continue  too  busy  to  write  twice  a  week;  for  Cap- 
tain Steller  and  Lieutenants  Younkin,  Rubel,  Nelson  and 
Pearsall  have  been  detached  temporarily  and  sent  away  to 
training  school,  leaving  Mr.  MilHkin  and  myself  to  run  the 
company.  Later  we  will  go  to  school,  and  in  the  meantime 
we  certainly  have  our  hands  full. 

I  have  supervision  of  sanitation  and  of  a  mess  for  some 
30  officers,  so  you  can  realize  that  there  is  very  little  sur- 
plus time  to  hang  heavy  on  my  hands.  All  that  is  not 
demanded  by  routine  duties  is  being  devoted  to  receiving 
instruction.  I  have  learned  a  lot  that  I  am  sure  will  stand 
me  in  good  stead  later.  The  training  we  are  getting  is 
very  interesting;  the  only  fault  I  have  to  find  is  that  I 
couldn't  possibly  get  enough  of  it.  That's  always  the  way 
with  the  things  worth  while,  no  matter  what  your  vocation. 

The  weather  continues  cold,  with  lots  of  snow,  but  the 
winter  is  far  more  endurable  than  in  New  York,  I  note 
that  you  have  been  going  through  a  bitter  spell,  and  hope 
that  it  did  not  mean  any  hardship  for  you  because  of  coal 
shortage.  I  continue  well.  Had  a  slight  cold  because  I 
didn't  get  my  boots  and  heavy  shoes  in  time,  but  it  is  gone 
now,  and  I  am  in  the  pink  of  condition. 

No  mail  from  you  yet  since  Christmas,  but  I  know  it's 


The  Russian  Enigma  291 

not  your  fault.     Love  to  Dad  and  yourself  and  regards  to 
my  friends.  Q- 

January  13,  191 8. 

Dear  Mother:  I  have  been  more  interested  the  last 
day  or  so  in  the  news  from  back  home,  as  printed  in  the 
Paris  editions  of  the  N.  Y.  Herald  and  Chicago  Tribune, 
than  at  any  time  since  landing  in  France.  President 
Wilson  has,  it  seems  to  me,  made  one  of  his  best  strokes 
of  diplomacy  in  his  latest  address  to  Congress  setting  forth 
the  ends  America  is  fighting  for.  In  so  far  as  the  Russian 
people  may  be  considered  as  having  a  point  of  view,  the 
President's  speech  is  the  thing  to  hit  it  exactly  right  at 
exactly  the  right  time. 

Developments  in  the  Russo-German  "peace"  negotia- 
tions appear  to  indicate  that  the  Huns  are  having  to  deal 
with  at  least  a  nucleus  of  loyal  Russians  who  are  not  to  be 
domineered  by  the  German-bought  traitors  among  the 
Bolsheviki,  and  who  are  fully  aware  that  the  proceedings 
thus  far  might  be  much  better  termed  "German  annex- 
ation negotiations." 

A  band  of  sincere,  idealistic  dreamers  roused  to  war  by 
German  chicanery,  as  it  has  been  practised  upon  them 
already,  might  well  turn  out  to  be  the  most  dangerous  foe 
Kultur  has  yet  stirred  up  for  itself.  As  I  have  written  to 
you  before,  I  have  never  joined  those  pessimists  who  have 
given  Russia  up  as  entirely  lost.  There  are  some  who  still 
hope  to  see  the  guillotine  set  up  on  the  Nevsky  Prospect, 
and  if  it  is  set  up  its  blade  might  just  as  well  fall  directly 
upon  the  neck  of  the  Hohenzollem  dynasty,  for  the  blows 
that  it  strikes  will  ultimately  reach  that  far.  The  situ- 
ation in  Russia  has  not  yet  reached  its  final  phase.  No 
man  can  tell  what  that  final  phase  will  be.  Not  until  the 
great  Russian  people  have  been  crushed  down  to  the  very 
ground  under  the  weight  of  Prussianism  w^ill  I  believe  that 


292  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

they  are  entirely  lost  to  the  rest  of  the  world,  that  the 
forces  of  reaction  are  to  be  enrooted  in  the  ruins  of  the 
Romanoff  throne  instead  of  those  of  progress. 

We  are  very  much  buried  here  in  our  little  theatre  of 
action  in  France.  We  haven't  much  time  to  think;  we 
are  too  intent  on  learning  how  to  combat  the  immediate 
physical  strength  of  Kultur  to  pay  much  attention  to  the 
bigger  underlying  spiritual  forces  which  move  much  more 
slowly  than  von  Hindenburg's  drive,  but  which  will,  after 
all,  have  much  more  to  do  with  shaping  history  as  it  will  be 
written.  Nevertheless,  we  do  think,  and  only  in  the  fact 
that  the  men  who  do  the  work  in  the  trenches  can  think 
lies  the  hope  for  the  future.  If  the  German  soldiers  could 
think,  if  they  had  not  been  carefully  taught  not  to  think, 
then  the  problem  would  be  easy  of  solution,  would  solve 
itself.  Since  the  German  man-machine  is  devoid  of  reason 
there  seems  to  be  but  one  answer — to  annihilate  as  many 
of  him  as  possible.  Hence  it  is  that  the  one  idea  of  the 
Allied  soldiers  as  they  start  into  a  new  year  of  war  is, 
"Kill  the  Boche!" 

If  you  can  kill  enough  of  him  he  begins  to  be  overawed 
by  physical  terror,  the  only  means  by  which  you  can 
make  any  appeal  to  him.  And  the  French,  English  and 
American  men  higher  up  in  military  matters  all  assure 
you  with  a  certainty  that  bears  every  appearance  of  being 
founded  on  fact,  that  the  Allies  are  killing  four  or  more 
Germans  for  every  man  they  lose. 

One  thing  I  cannot  understand,  unless  the  explanation 
may  be  that  German  high  command  does  not  want  to  pay 
such  a  price,  with  its  men  handicapped  by  the  snow  and  ice 
underfoot,  is  why  the  big  German  drive  on  the  Western 
front  is  being  so  long  delayed.  It  has  been  due  ever  since 
the  Russian  collapse ;  the  longer  the  delay  the  less  German 
hope  possible  of  its  succeeding.  So  far  as  any  actual 
danger  exists  of  its  succeeding,  I  am  in  a  position  to  state 


Yellow  Peril  293 

there  isn't  any.  The  harder  the  drive,  the  more  dead 
Germans  without  proportionate  Allied  loss.  So  let  them 
come  and  be  damned  to  them — and  the  harder  they  drive 
the  better. 

I  have  seen  pretty  nearly  every  sort  of  soldier  you  can 
think  of  except  Belgians,  Serbians,  Roumanians,  and 
Italians.  The  most  picturesque  are  the  Turcos,  French 
"Blue  Devils"  and  Scotch  kilties,  British,  Canadians, 
Australians,  Russians,  even  Japanese,  I've  seen  them  all. 
The  Japs  were  doing  guard  duty  at  the  port  where  we 
landed ;  so  were  the  Russians. 

The  Chinese  who  have  been  transported  here  in  great 
gangs  to  do  the  heavy  labor  have  attracted  my  attention 
particularly.  All  I  have  to  say  is  that  if  the  "yellow 
peril"  ever  boils  over  out  of  the  Orient  under  the  leader- 
ship of  Japan,  God  help  the  lands  it  invades.  These 
coolies,  staring  at  us  and  jabbering  away  among  them- 
selves, remind  you  for  all  the  world  of  gorillas.  It  is  a 
remarkable  fact  that  there  is  a  striking  similarity  between 
the  bestiality  you  see  in  their  faces  and  that  you  see  in 
the  faces  of  the  Hun  prisoners  who  are  also  working  in 
crowds  all  about.  There  is  nothing  surprising  about  see- 
ing it  in  the  faces  of  the  Chinese,  but  you  might  have  ex- 
pected something  more  from  members  of  a  race  which  has 
had  equal  advantages  with  the  other  Western  peoples  for 
civilization.  The  interesting  problem  is  not  so  much  how 
to  lick  the  Germans  as  what  to  do  with  them  after  they're 
licked.  How  such  brutes  can  be  permitted  to  continue  to 
live  next  door  to  enlightened  peoples  is  hard  to  see. 

Well,  maybe  I  can  solve  the  question  by  sleeping  over  it. 
If  not,  I  can  at  least  prepare  myself  by  getting  plenty  of 
sleep  for  dealing  directly  with  friend  Boche.  So  lots  of 
love  for  both  Dad  and  yourself,  and  remember  me  to  all 
the  friends.     More  soon.     No  letters  yet.     Good-night. 

QUINCY. 


294  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

January  15,  1918. 

Dear  Mother  :  It  is  true  that  I  am  a  busy  lad  these 
days,  but  I  will  have  to  be  a  whole  lot  busier  before  I  let 
my  birthday  go  by  without  writing  you  a  letter. 

I  am  celebrating  my  natal  day  by  writing  this  letter  and 
by  getting  my  hair  cut.  Just  as  I  started  to  write  to  you 
one  of  the  men  from  the  company  came  in  and  advised  me 
that  he  was  ready  to  amputate  my  locks,  so  I  sheathed  the 
pencil  and  he  unlimbered  his  shears  and  fell  to.  The 
result  was  hardly  like  a  Broadway  cut,  more  like  ' '  the  sort 
that  Mother  used  to  make"  by  turning  the  bread-and- 
milk  bowl  over  your  head  and  whacking  off  all  that 
showed.     But  'twill  serve,  and  the  Lord  knows  I  needed  it. 

The  last  cut  I  got  was  on  the  boat.  And  the  barber 
who  supplied  me  with  that  one  was  sure  the  Germans  were 
such  mighty  men  because  they  drank  so  much  beer. 
England  had  made  a  fearsome  mistake,  in  his  opinion,  in 
cutting  down  the  beer  ration,  and  the  U.S.  was  stumbling 
fast  after  to  perdition.  Not  the  roast  beef  but  the  fine 
sack  of  old  England  had  made  her  famous,  in  this  seafaring 
barber's  opinion,  and  the  tears  nearly  trickled  down  his 
cheeks  as  he  bewailed  her  latter  day  decadence.  I  almost 
staggered  from  his  presence,  too,  I  might  add;  the  sale  of 
intoxicants  to  soldiers  was  forbidden  aboardship,  but  all 
you  had  to  do  to  get  a  jag  was  go  and  smell  the  barber's 
breath. 

To-day  was  the  first  time  I  was  ever  served  by  a  barber 
in  hip  boots  of  the  rubber  variety,  but  I  may  have  stranger 
cuts  and  closer  shaves.  This  military  barber  was  like  his 
civilian  brethren  in  garrulity.  He  descanted  at  length  on 
that  interpretation  of  a  certain  passage  in  the  Book  of 
Revelation  according  to  which  the  war  is  going  to  end 
next  month.  I  told  him  that  while  I  wouldn't  discourage 
his  devotion  to  the  Bible,  just  the  same  I  would  keep  on 
learning  to  throw  hand  grenades  and  shoot  automatic 


Blessing  of  Peace  295 

rifles  and  jab  bayonets,  if  I  were  in  his  place.  I  promised 
him,  however,  that  if  the  war  did  end  next  month,  any 
man  in  Co.  G  who  beat  me  to  a  church  to  offer  up  my 
thanks  would  have  to  take  a  good  start  and  run  fast.  I 
also  promised  him  that  in  such  a  case  I  would  be  a  regular 
attendant  not  only  at  Sunday  school  and  church,  but  at 
prayer  meeting  and  all  the  special  services  I  could  find  out 
about,  and  that  I  would  join  all  the  churches,  including 
the  Roman  Catholic. 

I  will  assure  you,  moreover,  that  in  case  these  prophets 
win  out  I  am  going  to  sing  louder  than  S.  M.,  pray  louder 
than  Uncle  T.  A.,  and  look  twice  as  sanctimonious  as  old 
man  G.  B.  all  the  rest  of  my  days.  Anybody  who  gets 
anything  on  me  for  observing  all  the  forms  of  piety  will 
have  to  go  some.  Not  that  I  am  "skeered,"  or  anything 
like  that,  but  as  between  war  and  peace,  give  me  peace — 
although  not  at  any  price ;  I  am  not  too  proud  to  fight,  and 
I'm  not  too  proud  to  sleep  until  7 :30  A.M.  in  an  honest -to- 
God  bed,  either,  instead  of  sleeping  until  6  A.M.  on  an  army 
cot,  no  matter  how  comfortable  Bill  Cramer's  sleeping 

bag  is. 

The  barber  got  me  started  and  it's  hard  to  ring  off,  but  I 
guess  I  had  better  pass  on  to  cell  you  that  if  nothing  goes 
amiss  I  may  see  something  of  the  Alps  and  Switzerland 
before  I  get  home.  The  men  are  all  planning  their  trips, 
and  most  of  them  vote  for  a  triumphal  return  via  China 
and  the  Golden  Gate,  but  you  know  my  weakness  for  the 
mountain  tops  and  the  hikes  above  the  clouds.  As  to 
our  future  plans,  I  suppose  that  making  them  is  waste  of 
time,  for  if  we  last  until  Uncle  Sam  gets  through  using  us 
he  will  pack  us  all  off  home  in  a  bunch. 

If  everybody  who  wanted  to  wander  around  Europe  got 
a  leave  of  absence  to  do  so,  the  whole  American  army 
would  be  roving  over  the  map  indefinitely,  and  large 
contingents  of  it  tramping  away  from  Monte  Carlo  on  its 


296  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

uppers  if  the  prohibition  against  soldiers'  gambUng  were 
raised.  Now,  the  wheels  may  not  revolve  nor  the  cards 
fall  for  the  wearer  of  a  uniform.  No  wonder  I  can  afford 
to  send  an  allotment  home;  they  won't  let  a  soldier  be 
anything  but  good. 

Never  mind.  If  I  am  34  I  still  have  the  roaring  forties 
ahead  of  me,  and,  believe  me,  after  this  experience  I  sure 
am  going  to  make  them  roar.  Hello !  I  had  almost  for- 
gotten how  I  was  going  to  join  the  church — or  churches — 
and  haunt  the  mourners'  bench,  but  I  guess  I'll  manage  to 
arrange  my  schedule  so  I  still  may  roar  on  Tuesdays  and 
Fridays  until  I  am  50. 

No,  I  haven't  had  a  darn  drop  to  drink  for  my  birthday. 
But  the  cooks  made  a  pie  about  a  foot  and  a  half  across 
with  my  name  engrossed  on  the  crust,  and  maybe  it  went 
to  my  head.  Also,  we  had  some  more  of  those  fine  dough- 
nuts for  dinner.  At  that,  I  hope  we  may  all  eat  my  birth- 
day dinner  together  in  1919,  and  that  in  the  meantime  you 
and  Dad  will  not  do  any  unnecessary  worrying.  With  lots 
of  love  for  both  of  you,  and  hoping  to  get  a  letter  from  you 
soon,  QuiNCY. 

January  20,  191 8. 

Dear  Mother:  I  am  inclosing  a  little  present — a 
Jeanne  d'Arc  medal,  which  is  insignificant  in  value,  but  as 
a  work  of  art,  I  think,  very  fine.  I  would  have  preferred  to 
get  this  in  pin  shape,  but  could  not,  so  if  you  wish  you  can 
have  the  link  at  the  top  cut  off,  and  a  safety  catch  fast- 
ened on  the  back.  You  see  my  faith  is  great.  In  spite  of 
the  fact  that  I  haven't  got  any  since  Christmas,  I  believe 
that  letters  still  cross  the  Atlantic.  Somehow  I  feel 
reasonably  sure  that  my  mail  is  getting  home  regularly, 
and  I  hope  I  am  right. 

The  little  shops  in  the  town  near  here  are  queer  combi- 
nations of  business  establishments,   menageries,   living 


Money  in  Wads  297 

rooms  and  nurseries.  In  each  one  you  will  find  the  whole 
d —  family,  including  the  d —  dog,  congregated  around  the 
store  stove  to  save  fuel.  Naturally,  such  places  are  not 
long  on  sanitation,  but  then  there  isn't  much  of  that  here 
except  what  we  brought  along  with  us. 

While  I  was  purchasing  your  Jeanne  d'Arc  medal 
yesterday  a  large  red  and  green  parrot  was  cocking  his 
eye  at  me  from  his  cage  and  screaming  ' '  Hello. ' '  When  I 
went  into  my  shoe  shop  to  have  "talons"  put  on  my  high 
boots  I  found  a  fine  big  Persian  cat  named  Pierrot  playing 
with  everyone  who  came  in,  and  with  him  I  spent  some 
time.  Through  the  cranny  of  every  door  that  stands  ajar 
along  every  street  you  can  see  a  dog's  nose  protruding. 
This  is  surely  a  land  of  pets,  and  sleek,  fat  ones  they  are 
too,  war  rations  or  no  war  rations.  You  can  scarcely 
thread  your  way  through  the  narrow  streets  without 
stumbling  over  dogs,  big  or  little.  They  must  consume 
enough  grub  to  keep  a  company  moving,  at  least. 

But  everybody  feeds  well.  For  dinner,  or  lunch,  at  the 
hotel  yesterday  I  had— shades  of  the  battle  of  the  Mame ! 
— sauerkraut  and  "sossidges  "  (and  dam  good  the  melange 
was,  too,  I'll  assure  you),  roast  mutton  and  spuds,  choco- 
late, neufchatel  cheese,  war  bread,  unsalted  butter  and 
"red  ink."  Not  a  bad  meal  that,  for  three  francs  fifty 
centimes,  or  about  60  cents  in  real  money,  especially 
considering  that  I  encored  on  every  course.  I  hardly  had 
the  face  to  look  the  proprietress  in  the  eyes  when  I  paid  up. 
Quite  a  contrast,  this,  with  the  scraping  and  stinting  I 
encountered  in  England. 

Speaking  of  "real  money"  prompts  me  to  remark  that 
you  get  so  much  of  this  French  stage  money  in  exchange  for 
a  $100  pay  check — about  what  I  am  drawing  now — that 
you  feel  like  a  millionaire.  The  stuft  doesn't  look  like 
money,  it  doesn't  feel  like  money,  and  it  doesn't  spend  like 
money.     It's  like  the  chaff  from  wheat!     Fill  a  bushel 


298  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

measure  with  it  and  it  doesn't  weigh  a  thing.  You  get  all 
your  pockets  stuffed  with  these  flimsy  franc  notes  of  vari- 
ous denominations,  and  your  natural  inclination  is  to  get 
rid  of  the  stuff  and  get  yourself  comfortable.  And,  after 
you  spend  it,  you  find  upon  calculation  that  you  have 
been  spending  real  money — and  haven't  got  anything  in 
return.  I'm  keeping  a  $i  bill  in  my  pocketbook  just  so  I 
can  look  at  it  from  time  to  time  and  see  what  real  money 
looks  like.  And  when  I  get  back  to  the  States  I'm  going 
to  have  that  souvenir  dollar  framed  alongside  a  5-franc 
note  (a  dollar  is  worth  just  about  5f.  70c.  now)  so  that 
everyone  will  believe  me  when  I  say  that  all  the  stage 
money  x^omes  from  France. 

As  an  illustration  of  how  you  throw  the  stuff  away :  I 
was  buying  some  things  yesterday,  and  the  proprietress  of 
the  shop  had  asked  me  40  francs  for  something  I  fancied. 
I  had  already  started  to  dig  out  the  money  when  a  friend 
who  was  along  remarked,  "That's  sure  an  awful  price  to 
ask  for  that  trifle,  $7.50."  Instantly  I  caught  myself  (at 
the  thought  that  in  spending  francs  I  was  spending  real 
money)  and  back  the  pocketbook  went,  and  the  deal  was 
off.  Not  only  that,  but  I  immediately  got  sore  at  the  idea 
that  the  woman  was  overcharging  me.  But  had  not  my 
friend  spoken  up,  the  deal  would  have  gone  through  with- 
out hesitation. 

And,  speaking  of  food,  I  have  had  lots  of  experience  of  a 
brand  new  sort  since  I  have  been  acting  as  mess  officer. 
As  we  have  a  mess  sergeant  who  was  in  the  provision  busi- 
ness before  he  took  up  arms  I  have  had  really  a  very  easy 
time  of  it.  But  food  will  run  short  sometimes,  and  un- 
expected things  will  happen.  For  instance,  some  75 
French  infantrymen  turned  up  the  other  day  unexpectedly 
— they  assist  in  the  instruction  of  the  American  troops — 
after  one  of  our  field  ranges  they  had  been  using  had  been 
dismantled.     Consequently  there  was  nowhere  for  them 


Helping  the  Entente  299 

to  prepare  the  food  they  had  brought  along  already 
cooked,  but  cold.  It  was  a  bitter  day,  with  a  sheathing  of 
ice  on  the  ground,  and  letting  them  eat  cold  food  was  out 
of  the  question.  So  I  had  our  cooks  take  charge  of  the 
French  "chow"  and  put  it  on  our  stoves — then  lined  the 
Frenchmen  up  and  gave  each  one  a  steaming  cup  of  coffee 
from  a  boilerful  we  had  left  over  from  breakfast.  Well, 
sir,  ever  since  that  incident  if  I  go  anywhere  near  these 
Frenchmen  I  find  myself  shortly  the  center  of  a  circle  of 
admiring  poilus,  and,  no  matter  which  way  I  turn,  heels 
click  and  hands  go  up  in  salute  beside  faces  wreathed 
in  smiles.  Honestly,  it  seems  to  me  that  these  men 
actually  run  around  in  front  of  me  to  get  the  opportunity 
to  smile  their  gratitude.  ' '  It's  things  like  that  that  count 
in  this  game,"  the  Colonel  advised  me  when  I  reported  the 
disposition  I  had  made  for  the  Frenchies'  comfort. 

American  "chow"  is  greatly  prized  by  the  French  sol- 
diers at  all  times,  particularly  our  coffee ;  they  will  jump 
at  every  chance  they  can  get  to  sink  their  teeth  into 
American  rations — and  the  American  soldier  is  always 
ready  to  divide.  There  is  an  obvious  camaraderie  be- 
tween Yank  and  poilu. 

I  am  writing  this  letter  in  the  army  officers'  Y.  M.  C.  A. 
at  [Langres]  and  am  having  a  very  comfortable  time  of  it 
in  spite  of  the  dark,  gray,  drizzly  day  which  is  turning  the 
streets  slowly  from  sheets  of  glass  to  slippery  slush  outside. 
The  officers'  Y.  M.  C.  A.  is  located  in  an  ancient  mansion, 
with  a  duly  landscaped  garden  at  its  rear,  which  must 
have  been  the  residence  once  of  some  very  important  folk. 
But  latterly  it  has  fallen  upon  days  of  shabbiness,  and 
what  was  formerly  coldness  of  splendor  in  its  atmosphere 
has  become  absolute  frigidity,  considering  the  bareness 
of  the  walls  and  the  scarcity  of  fuel.  Nevertheless,  the 
place  has  certain  attractions,  chiefly  three  American  girls 
— honest-to-God    American    girls   who   can    understand 


300  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

what  you  say  to  them — who  serve  you  with  chocolate 
and  taffy  (all  sorts),  and  make  war  seem  considerably  less 
like  what  Sherman  said  it  was.  One  of  the  three  is  very 
pretty,  and  I  made  quite  a  hit  with  her  right  off  the  bat  by 
assuring  her  that  I  hadn't  seen  anything  in  France  that 
looked  as  good  to  me  as  she — a  real  American  girl.  It 
seemed  that  two  young  reserve  captains  had  tried  to  kid 
her  the  other  way  'round  by  telling  her  that  they  had 
mistaken  her  for  a  French  mademoiselle,  and  she  accepted 
their  effort  as  a  sort  of  back-handed  compliment — and 
came  and  smiled  on  me.  And  the  two  caps  got  very  sore, 
and  I  enjoyed  myself  greatly. 

They  serve  very  good  chocolate  here,  and  I  drank 
considerably  more  than  I  wanted  just  for  the  pleasure  of 
conversing  with  a  girl  who  could  bless  my  ears  with  real 
United  States  kidding  while  I  drank.  This  idea  of  having 
companionable  young  women  on  hand  to  keep  the  officers 
company  is  pretty  good  psychology;  it  certainly  lessens 
any  attractions  which  any  less  respectable  female  com- 
panionship might  have.  For  the  most  part,  however,  you 
don't  have  either  time  or  energy  left  for  much  other 
companionship  than  your  work. 

Well,  I  must  quit  here  and  catch  a  truck  back  to  the 
fort,  or  I'll  have  to  walk  through  some  of  the  rottenest 
road  ever.  So  good  by  to  Dad  and  yourself  for  this  time. 
Much  love.  QuiNCY. 


CHAPTER  X 

Billeted  in  a  Village — Intimacies  of  French  Life  at  St.  Ciergues — 
A  Lone  Hand  in  Running  the  Company — Gas  Masks — Players  in 
War — A  Company  Mascot. 

The  next  letters  report  a  change  of  location  and  a 
change  in  conditions  of  life.  New  work  is  also  indicated 
in  the  mention  of  throwing  hand  grenades.  The  move 
was  made  on  January  17  to  the  village  of  St.  Ciergues,  a 
typical  French  farming  centre  a  few  kilometers  from 
Langres.  There  was  neither  fort  nor  barrack,  so  the 
battalion  was  billeted  on  the  homes  of  the  population. 
Mills  was  quartered  in  the  Hotel  Fevre,  kept  by  Madame 
Victorine  Delanne.  Of  the  accommodations  and  the 
cuisine  it  is  not  necessary  to  speak,  for  Mills  enters  into 
enthusiastic  details. 

During  practically  all  his  stay  at  this  place,  the  Captain 
and  all  the  lieutenants  of  his  company  except  himself  and 
one  other  were  detached  for  special  instruction  at  the 
school  for  officers  at  Gondrecourt  in  the  Vosges.  He  was 
therefore  not  only  in  command,  but  had  much  of  the 
detailed  duty  of  the  platoons  to  carry  on.  How  he  did  it 
is  indicated  in  his  letter  of  February  17  with  the  brevity 
of  unconscious  modesty. 

As  regards  the  letters  which  follow,  it  is  proper  to  point 
out  that  they  contained  an  increased  number  of  passages 
and  allusions  which  are  not  to  be  given  here;  from  the 
time  when  he  began  to  receive  mail  from  home  the  inter- 
change naturally  involved  many  matters  of  a  private 

301 


302  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

nature,  family  business,  news  of  friends  and  relations  and 
other  strictly  personal  interests.  These  are  not  repro- 
duced. There  are  also  many  mentions  of  letters  and 
cards  received  from  friends,  and  sundry  gifts  of  smoking 
material,  sweet  stuff  and  extra  warm  clothing.  Many 
and  hearty  thanks  for  all  were  sent  home  by  Mills, 
with  due  specifications,  for  transmission  to  the  writers 
and  senders,  likewise  explanations  and  apologies  as 
to  the  impossibility  of  direct  acknowledgment.  These, 
also,  have  been  passed  over.  They  would  not  be  in- 
teresting to  the  general  reader  and  they  would  occupy 
a  good  deal  of  space  without  furthering  the  aim  of 
the  book.  The  numerous  allusions  to  the  late  Mr. 
William  A.  Gramer,  the  City  Hall  representative  of 
the  New  York  Globe,  have  been  preserved  as  a  special 
case. 

Mr.  Gramer,  who  died,  to  the  great  regret  of  all  who 
knew  him,  on  January  23,  1920,  was  a  fellow  newspaper 
worker,  a  comrade  and  a  highly  esteemed  friend  of  Mills. 
He  was  of  French  descent  and  it  was  a  matter  of  deep 
regret  to  him  that  his  years  and  his  health  prevented  him 
from  going  to  France  to  fight.  When  Mills  was  getting 
his  outfit  together  before  sailing,  Mr.  Gramer  gave  him 
a  pair  of  field  glasses  made  in  Paris.  They  were  of  the 
finest  grade ;  nothing  like  them  could  have  been  bought  in 
New  York  at  the  time ;  in  fact  it  was  hard  to  buy  any  sort 
of  binoculars.  Mr.  Gramer  also  gave  him  a  camp  outfit 
consisting  of  a  heavy  felt  sleeping  bag,  a  fur  cap  and  a  fur 
foot  warmer.  In  addition,  he  constantly  sent  over  sup- 
plies of  cigars  of  the  excellent  brand  he  smoked  himself. 
Of  these,  mentions  abound  in  the  letters  home,  as  has 
already  been  seen.  Mills  told  his  mother  he  thought  that 
over  and  above  the  warm  regard  between  them,  Mr. 
Gramer  looked  upon  him  as  in  a  sense  his  own  substitute 
on  the  battlefront.     With  these  explanations,  the  story 


Luxurious  Quarters  303 

may  be  allowed  to  go  on  from  Mills's  pen,  telling  of  his 
experiences  at  St.  Ciergues: 

January  23,  191 8. 

Dear  Mother  :  Since  anything  that  has  a  cat  on  it  is 
O.  K.,  according  to  your  notion,  I  risk  inclosing  this  card. 
Incidentally,  I  have  seen  very  few  cats  like  the  New  York 
brand  since  hitting  Europe,  but  I  have  found  one  or  two 
who  wear  Sweet's  white  shoes  and  vest. 

I  know  you  will  be  interested  to  hear  that  we  have 
moved,  and  are  now  enjoying  the  experience  of  being 
billeted  in  a  tiny  French  village.  I  am  very  comfortably 
situated  in  the  best  hostelry  the  place  affords,  with  a 
regular  bed  and  an  excellent  French  cook.  In  almost 
every  respect  I  am  much  better  fixed  than  I  was  at  the 
fort,  and  if  I  could  only  get  some  mail  I  would  be  just 
about  as  contented  as  I  could  be  away  from  my  own 
people. 

It  was  just  two  months  ago  to-day  that  I  left  the  U.  S. 
and  it  will  be  a  month  day  after  to-morrow  since  I  have 
received  any  letters.  All  of  us  in  the  company  are  pretty 
much  in  the  same  boat.  I  hope  you  have  not  fared  so 
badly  with  my  communiques  to  you.  At  any  rate,  I  am 
working  so  hard  that  I  can't  lie  awake  worrying  at  night 
over  my  isolation.  We  came  over  here  "to  beat  hell," 
and  that's  certainly  the  way  I'm  working. 

Hoping  you  and  Dad  are  both  well,  with  lots  of  love, 

QUINCY. 

The  memorandum  which  follows  this  note  is  dated 
January  19,  two  days  after  the  i68th  was  billeted 
on  St.  Ciergues,  and  it  shows  the  characteristic  thorough- 
ness with  which  Mills  handled  his  company  and  the 
situation. 


304  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

Company  G,  i68th  Infantry, 
St.  Ciergues,  France,  January  19,  1918. 

Memorandum : 

1 .  The  men  of  this  company  are  under  no  condition  to  enter 
houses,  barns  or  other  private  buildings,  other  than  those 
assigned  to  them  as  billets. 

2.  The  hours  diiring  which  they  may  enter  drinking  places 
are  designated  and  they  will  take  care  not  to  be  in  such  places 
at  other  times. 

3.  Latrines  have  been  constructed,  and  the  men  will  see  to  it 
that  there  is  no  pollution  of  the  streets  by  themselves  or  visit- 
ing troops. 

4.  Men  may  wash  in  the  compartments  of  the  horse  troughs 
farthest  from  the  point  where  water  enters.  The  troughs  are 
usually  in  three  compartments.  Use  the  compartment  from 
which  the  water  overflows  into  the  drain. 

5.  There  will  be  no  smoking  or  lighting  of  candles  in  billets 
in  which  straw  is  stored. 

6.  Blouses  and  overcoats  must  be  worn  buttoned  at  all  times. 
Overcoat  collars  will  not  be  turned  up  at  any  time. 

By  Order  of  Quincy  S.  Mills 

2nd  Lieutenant,  i68th  Infantry 
Commanding  Co.  G. 

Somewhere  Else  in  France, 
[St.  Ciergues], 

January  26,  191 8, 

Dear  Mother  :  As  I  told  you  in  my  note  of  the  23d, 
we  have  moved,  and  I  am  now  enjoying  the  experience  of 
being  billeted,  which  is  not  half  bad,  by  the  way.  I  am 
beginning  to  believe,  too,  that  there  is  luck  in  moving,  for 
yesterday's  mail  brought  me  the  first  batch  of  letters 
I  have  received  since  Christmas  Day.  There  was  one 
from  you,  dated  December  14,  in  which  you  spoke  of 
having  received  my  two  sailing  notes  of  November  23; 
one  from  "the  same  old  Bill  Gramer"  (he  is  certainly  a 


Typical  French  Village  305 

staunch  friend),  and  a  Xmas  card  from  little  Alice  Morris, 
for  whose  thoughtfulness  you  will  please  express  my  deep 
appreciation.  All  this  mail  was  postmarked  around 
December  15.  That's  the  way  it  seems  to  get  here — in 
batches.  And  the  trouble  is  that  most  of  the  batches  seem 
to  lose  their  way.  What  becomes  of  them  the  Lord  only 
knows,  but  I  am  pretty  sure  they  don't  all  go  to  Davy 
Jones's  Locker. 

As  I  had  noted  already  in  the  papers  the  bitter  New 
York  weather  I  was  not  surprised  to  read  in  your  letter  of 
the  stalled  Broadway  cars  under  our  windows.  The  most 
amazing  thing  about  your  missive  was  that  you  didn't 
say  a  word  about  the  cats  in  it.  Am  I  to  infer  that  you 
have  served  them  all  up  en  casserole  in  your  effort  to 
vanquish  old  General  Hi  Cost  O'Livin'  ?  Things  have  not 
yet  come  to  that  pass  over  here — not  on  this  side  of  the 
Hindenburg  line,  at  least. 

I  hope  that  you  are  faring  better  with  the  receipt  of  my 
letters  than  I  am  with  yours.  I  figured  that  mine  ought 
to  be  arriving  in  Wadsworth  Avenue  about  January  i  at 
the  latest.  I  hoped  you  might  get  the  first  one  by  Christ- 
mas. Before  I  get  off  the  letter  subject  I  will  explain  that 
I  forgot  to  put  the  letter  number  at  the  head  of  my  last 
letter.     It  should  have  been  No.  5. 

The  "somewhere  else"  from  which  I  am  writing  this  is 
a  quaint  old  village,  the  houses  of  which,  seemingly  as 
ancient  as  the  land  itself,  are  tucked  along  under  the  brow 
of  a  hill  that  looks  down  upon  an  artificial  lake  so  beautiful 
that  it  seems  to  have  been  put  here  by  the  hand  of  Nature 
instead  of  man's.  Although  less  rugged  this  country 
equals  the  Sapphire  country  of  western  North  Carolina  in 
beauty,  and  might  well  rival  that  locality  in  name,  such 
are  the  sunset  effects  upon  the  rolling  bluffs  which  hem  in 
the  valley  and  the  others  running  into  it. 

The  waters  of  the  lake  are  confined  by  a  dam  which  is  an 


3o6  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

architectural  masterpiece  to  be  classed  along  with  Wash- 
ington and  High  Bridges,  and  is  not  unlike  High  Bridge 
in  general  structure.  The  lake  stretches  away  in  front  of 
my  window,  right  opposite  which  the  overflow  water 
rushes  down  a  spillway,  built  like  a  giant's  staircase,  over 
the  steps  of  which  the  stream  makes  a  constant  roar  that 
penetrates  my  chamber  even  when  the  window  is  closed. 
What  surprises  me  is  that  no  use  is  made  of  this  water- 
power.  The  lake  is  the  source  of  supply  for  the  canal 
system  in  this  section,  but  it  could  at  the  same  time 
furnish  the  power  to  drive  electrical  turbines  sufficient  to 
light  all  the  villages  in  the  vicinity,  and  they  dot  the 
valleys  everywhere.  They  are  about  as  primitive  as  any 
hamlets  imaginable.  The  one  in  which  I  am  living  now  is 
probably  typical,  and  it  was  certainly  an  unkempt  place 
when  we  struck  it.  It  is  inhabited  by  peasant  folk  who 
had  evidently  never  bothered  to  throw  any  slops  farther 
than  the  door  sills  from  the  day  the  first  little  stone  houses 
grew  up  with  the  narrow,  rocky  streets  between  them. 

The  first  capacity  in  which  we  hit  this  place  was  as  street- 
cleaners,  and  we  will  surely  be  able  to  qualify  as  "White 
Wings"  if  we  ever  strike  New  York  again.  We  literally 
scraped  off  the  dirt.  I  exaggerate  only  slightly  when  I  say 
that  had  all  the  rubbish  around  the  venerable  cross,  rising 
near  the  principal  watering  trough,  been  heaped  together, 
the  tin  cans  and  other  refuse  would  have  hid  the  relic 
from  view.  The  manure  piles  overflowed  into  the  streets 
and  the  waste  water  from  the  nimierous  stone  watering 
troughs  mingled  with  the  surplus  to  form  an  offensive 
paste  very  nearly  shoemouth  deep.  All  this  filth  we 
removed;  we  opened  drains  that  appeared  to  have  been 
clogged  for  ages,  and  built  new  ones;  we  even  succeeded 
in  restraining  the  sacred  manure  piles,  although  several 
efforts  to  secure  entire  changes  of  location  for  the  most 
objectionable  of  them  came  pretty  near  to  ending  in  riots. 


A  Flood  of  Mail  307 

For  where  we  cherish  bank  accounts  in  the  States  they 
cherish  manure  heaps  over  here,  and,  from  all  appear- 
ances, some  of  the  heaps  have  been  handed  down  from 
generation  to  generation  since  the  beginning  of  time. 
When  you  consider  that  while  we  did  this  cleaning  up  we 
kept  on  training,  you  can  appreciate  that  we  have  been 
busy  from  reveille  at  5  45  until  dark  each  day. 

While  we  have  not  yet  got  this  transformed  into  a  Spot- 
less Town,  we  can  live  here  without  fear  of  pestilence,  and 
we  are  proud  of  the  job.  Because  of  my  busyness  will  quit 
for  this  time. 

With  much  love  for  Dad  and  yourself,  Quincy. 

January  30,  1918. 

Dear  Mother  :  From  all  the  signs  I  judge  that  winter 
is  over.  When  we  moved  here  the  face  of  the  earth  was 
covered  with  snow  and  ice.  In  a  day,  almost,  the  change 
came;  in  two  or  three  the  ice  had  disappeared  from  the 
lake  and  the  snow  from  the  hills.  Almost  overnight 
flannels  became  oppressive;  it  is  very  fatiguing  now  to 
drill  in  a  coat. 

I  had  no  idea  the  seasons  here  were  so  far  ahead  of  those 
at  home.  I  rather  looked  for  protracted  cold.  We  are 
advised  that  we  will  not  be  bothered  in  that  respect  much 
more,  but  that  we  may  count  on  a  long  rainy  season  to 
set  in  any  day.  I  continue  well;  the  health  of  the  entire 
organization  is  remarkably  good,  in  fact. 

Hoping  this  finds  you  and  Dad  both  well,  with  hopes  for 
a  letter  and  much  love,  Quincy. 

February  3,  191 8. 

Dear  Mother:  This  has  surely  been  our  big  week 
since  arriving  in  France,  for  it  brought  us  our  first  real 
mail    since    Christmas.     Wednesday    I    received    seven 


3o8  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

letters  from  you  and  three  from  Dad,  of  which  one  had 
also  an  inclosure  from  you,  and  a  large  number  of  others, 
including  two  from  dear  little  Alice  Morris  and  a  Christ- 
mas letter  from ,  which  I  appreciated  greatly.     And 

then  to-day  came  four  more  letters  from  you  along  with 
several  others,  and  the  package  of  coffee.  Right  here  I 
want  to  ask  you  to  call  up  Mr.  Luby  and  thank  him  for 
The  Evening  Sun  clips.  I  now  have  the  file  up  to  Decem- 
ber 22,  and  cannot  tell  you  how  much  enjoyment  it  has 
given  me. 

I  got  so  many  letters  in  the  first  batch  that  it  was  not 
until  Thursday  night  that  I  had  them  all  read.  I  haven't 
much  spare  time,  and  whenever  I  could  snatch  a  minute 
I  read  a  letter  until  I  had  finished  my  mail-bag.  The 
Evening  Sun  extracts  I  read  in  the  same  way,  and,  coming 
from  the  old  shop,  they  are  just  like  letters.  They  will 
occupy  me  for  some  time,  for  I  read  every  line  of  them, 
and  then  turn  them  over  and  study  the  ads  on  their  backs. 
All  the  clippings  you  inclose  I  also  enjoy  greatly.  Send 
as  many  as  you  think  will  interest  me.  I  have  received 
every  letter  you  had  written  me  down  to  January  lo,  and 
am  much  relieved  to  know  that  my  letters  reached  you 
regularly.  I  feared  you  might  be  suffering  the  same 
interruption  that  I  was,  and  that  you  might  be  worried. 

The  Evening  Sun  clipping  regarding  Hughes's  Bayonet 
interested  me,  but  where  they  are  getting  time  for  such 
activities  at  Camp  Lee  I  do  not  know,  unless  somebody 
is  donating  the  funds  to  pay  for  all  the  work  by  civilian 
talent.  I  assure  you  there  is  no  time  or  energy  for  such 
side-lines  over  here.  The  idea  is  a  good  one  for  building 
up  the  morale  of  the  drafted  men,  and  giving  them  an 
interest  in  their  work,  however. 

It  was  kind  of  Miss  to  remember  me.     Please 

express  my  appreciation  for  me  for  the  card.  All  my 
friends  must  understand  that  if  I  do  not  have  time  to  write 


French  Mistletoe  309 

to  them  I  always  have  time  to  think  of  them.     When  you 

see  Mrs. again  tell  her  I  have  worn  her  sweater  more 

than  any  other,  and  that  it  sure  has  kept  me  warm. 
Although  I  have  been  exposed  a  great  deal,  and  have  had 
none  too  much  warmth  indoors,  I  haven't  suffered  any. 
Of  course  I  might  have  been  more  comfortable  sometimes, 
but  then  so  might  you  people  back  in  New  York  with  your 
coal  shortage. 

I  had  a  letter  of  good  wishes  from  Bob  Adamson  to-day, 
but  he  did  not  mention  his  munitions  business  venture. 
Mayor  Mitchel,  I  see,  is  to  be  an  aviation  major.  Well, 
he  used  to  be  able  to  "aviate"  to  pretty  high  altitudes 
when  anybody  got  his  goat  at  City  Hall.  Here's  hoping 
he  has  much  luck  in  the  military  branch  of  that  activity. 

I  have  to  thank  you  for  one  of  the  heartiest  laughs  I 
have  enjoyed  in  a  long  time  at  your  likening  me  to  Wilson 
"in  certain  ways."  But  that's  another  story,  and  the 
bugler  has  just  blown  taps,  so  I  had  better  quit  for  this 
time  and  go  to  bed.  With  much  love  for  both  you  and 
Dad,  and  regards  for  my  friends,  QuiNCY. 

P.S.  Here  is  a  sprig  of  that  French  mistletoe  which 
bears  evidence  of  its  quantity  of  berries.  Q. 

February  7,  1918. 

Dear  Mother:  I  am  inclosing  a  couple  of  clippings 
which  will  interest  you,  I  know.  You  will  probably  have 
seen  already  the  statement  regarding  the  location  of  the 
American  line  on  the  Lorraine  front.  Am  working  very 
hard,  but  the  work  is  interesting,  and  the  only  kick  I  have 
is  that  the  nights  aren't  twice  as  long.  I  can  sleep  any 
old  time. 

This  card  gives  you  some  idea  of  what  being  billeted  is 
like, — except  that  the  natives  pictured  on  it  are  highly 
idealized.     The  most  attractive  of  them  are  the  kiddies,  at 


310  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

whose  clumping  around  in  their  sabots  I  never  get  tired 
smiHng.  So  far  as  I  can  observe  the  scarcity  of  young  men 
in  this  country,  it  is  no  more  marked  than  the  scarcity  of 
young  women.  As  I  haven't  heard  of  the  RepubHc's 
ordering  its  Amazons  to  the  trenches,  this  strikes  me  as 
remarkable. 

Hoping  you  folks  are  happy,  and  as  well  as  I  am, 

QUINCY. 

The  card  is  a  picture  of  the  Hotel  Fevre  with  a  great 
group  of  tourists  posed  in  front  of  it. 

February  lo,  1918. 

Dear  Dad  :  I  rejoice  with  you  heartily  over  your  good 
news.  I  appreciate  a  whole  lot  your  thoughtfulness  in 
writing  to  me,  and,  of  course,  you  know  that  my  letters 
home  to  Mother  are  just  as  much  to  you  as  to  her.  I  have 
written  home  pretty  regularly,  this  being  my  chief  relaxa- 
tion. I  have  been  away  from  this  place  only  once  since 
arriving  for  it  is  necessary  to  walk  some  three  miles  to 
get  anywhere,  and,  besides,  I  have  had  my  hatful  of  work. 
For  a  great  deal  of  the  time  during  recent  weeks,  I  have 
had  just  about  as  much  work  and  responsibility  as  if  I  had 
been  a  company  commander.  The  drive  has  been  hard, 
but  it  has  been  worth  a  lot  to  me  in  the  way  of  experience. 

Speaking  of  hatsful  of  work,  we  have  put  on  the  latest 
style  in  spring  headgear — very  appropriately  with  the 
opening  of  the  season,  for  the  winter  is  clearly  over,  and 
has  been  for  three  weeks — and  the  men  are  greatly  tickled 
with  the  "  indestructo "  models  Uncle  Sam  has  issued  to 
them.  They  refer  to  them  jocularly  as  "tin  hats" — just 
as  they  called  the  submarines  "tin  fish" — and  bang  each 
other  over  the  head  with  sticks  just  to  hear  the  metal  ring. 
The  helmets,  while  heavy,  are  not  at  all  uncomfortable, 
after  the  first  day  or  so  getting  used  to  them.     I  had 


Up-to-date  War  Gear  311 

apprehended  they  might  cause  headaches,  but  no  one  has 
been  bothered  in  that  way.  You  have  no  idea  what  an 
improvement  in  the  appearance  of  the  company  the  hel- 
mets make.  They  give  the  ranks  a  uniformity  they  could 
never  have  with  the  old  campaign  hats  without  issuing 
new  ones  every  day.  I  have  never  cared  for  the  campaign 
hat  and  hope  it  will  be  abandoned ;  it  is  unpractical,  and  is 
being  discarded  over  here  for  fatigue  wear  in  favor  of  the 
cap  cut  on  the  pattern  of  the  French  peaked  cap. 

All  our  work  is  very  interesting  now,  the  feature  of  it  I 
like  best  being  the  throwing  of  live  grenades.  No  doubt 
my  preference  for  this  feature  is  that  I  am  considerably 
better  than  the  average  at  it.  If  I  were  in  the  ranks,  I 
would  probably  be  one  of  some  company's  crack  throwers. 
Of  course,  I  get  a  lot  of  diversion,  too,  out  of  the  pistol  and 
rifle  shooting,  but  they  are  old  games  in  comparison  with 
the  grenade  heaving.  I  have  been  having  some  experience 
with  gas  masks,  also,  but  will  not  develop  any  liking  for 
the  wearing  of  these  devices.  One  of  them  strapped  on 
your  head  makes  you  feel  as  if  you  were  in  a  diving  suit.  I 
hope  we  shall  not  have  to  wear  them  much  when  we  see 
service,  but  in  some  sectors  their  use  is  necessary  almost 
constantly. 

This  reminds  me  that  I  note  in  to-night's  paper  that  the 
Germans  are  massing  in  the  Belgian  sector.  From  what 
Lieutenant  Nelson  says  of  the  British  state  of  prepared- 
ness on  this  front,  behind  which  he  has  been  at  school, 
I  haven't  much  apprehension  of  their  making  any 
impression  to  speak  of  there.  And  I  understand  that 
they  will  not  find  conditions  any  more  favorable  for  them 
anywhere  else  on  the  Western  front.  Personally,  it  would 
surprise  me  if  an  American  drive  of  any  magnitude  were 
launched  this  summer,  although  anything  I  say  is  only  a 
guess.  The  French  are  insistent  in  the  belief  that  Ger- 
many will  not  keep  up  for  more  than  six  months,  but  it 


312  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

seems  to  me  that  things  may  drag  along  for  a  couple  of 
years  before  the  inevitable  end  comes. 

Of  course  the  French  have  a  better  line  on  things  than 
we  Americans  have.  There  are  certainly  indications  of 
Germany's  crumbling  power  which  are  not  to  be  over- 
looked. For  instance,  the  number  of  "dead"  shells  from 
German  batteries  is  said  to  be  constantly  increasing,  and 
already  of  such  proportions  as  to  be  remarkable.  Nelson 
says  all  the  Boche  ammunition  he  came  into  near-personal 
contact  with  seems  to  him  darned  lively,  but  then  he  was  a 
greenhorn  at  it.  The  papers  are  a  great  boon  to  us;  for 
instance,  if  they  can  print  that  the  American  line  is  on  the 
Alsace-Lorraine  front,  as  they  have  printed,  I  can  discuss 
the  matter  in  my  letters.  And  I  know  you  folks  are  glad 
to  get  some  sort  of  line  on  my  whereabouts. 

The  news  of  General  Leonard  Wood's  being  wounded 
by  shell  fire,  as  printed  in  the  Paris  papers,  was  also  most 
interesting  to  me.  I  did  not  even  know  he  was  over  here, 
and  I  am  wondering  what  significance  his  presence  has.  I 
was  sorry  to  see  in  Friday's  paper  that  the  U-boats  got  the 
Titscania,  but  the  surprising  thing  is  that  they  have  got  so 
few  transports.  These  Paris  editions  of  the  American 
papers  print  news  to-day,  also,  that  the  Russians  have 
refused  to  sign  a  separate  peace,  which  would  be  good 
enough,  if  true,  to  offset  several  transport  sinkings. 

I  am  surprised  to  note  the  accounts  of  Roosevelt's  illness. 
What  was  the  matter  with  his  eye?  I  saw  an  editorial 
reference  to  his  having  lost  it,  but  did  not  see  the  account 
of  the  loss  itself.  He  has  lived  a  mighty,  strenuous  life, 
and  it  would  not  be  extraordinary  should  he  go  to  pieces 
pretty  fast  now  that  he  has  started. 

As  to  the  Blount  story  about  the  killing  of  so  many 
Germans  by  one  man,  I  hardly  think  it  correct,  as  such  an 
incident  would  have  been  widely  circulated  among  the 
American  forces.     It  is  a  fact  that  when  the  Germans  got 


What  the  Soldiers  Say  313 

in  on  that  detachment  of  American  engineers  up  on  the 
Cambrai  front  one  of  our  men  who  was  armed  only  with  a 
shovel  got  two  Boches  with  it  before  they  got  him.  That 
is  the  spirit  of  the  men  throughout.  They  are  "as  con- 
tented," as  one  of  them  wrote  home,  "with  living  in 
French  bams  as  if  they  were  staying  at  the  Hotel  Astor." 
Their  letters  on  the  billeting  proposition  are  a  constant 
source  of  diversion  to  me.  "Billet  is  a  society  name  for 
barn,"  wrote  one.  "We  are  located  on  the  Rue  de 
Manure,"  wrote  another.  "Every  time  I  get  out  of  bed, 
I  have  to  kick  a  pig  in  the  slats,"  said  another.  "Look 
out  for  me  to  be  bucking  and  bellering  when  I  get  home," 
warned  still  another,  "for  I  have  been  living  in  a  barn  until 
I  feel  like  I  belong  there."  "I  can  feel  my  ears  growing 
longer  every  day,"  declared  one  more. 

They  are  as  cheerful  as  if  they  had  been  used  to  this  sort 
of  thing  all  their  lives,  although  you  can  hear  them  ex- 
pounding to  each  other  now  and  then  as  to  "why  the  hell 
they  must  fight  the  Germans  over  these  French  manure 
piles?"  I  believe  I  had  mentioned  already  that  every 
village  in  these  parts  contains  a  cheese  foundry.  Well,  the 
men  got  the  story  started  that  the  inhabitants  guard  their 
manure  piles  so  zealously  because  they  age  their  cheese  in 
them,  and  when  the  French  heard  this  story  through  the 
medium  of  the  interpreter,  they  failed  to  see  the  joke. 
The  men  swear  that  whoever  has  the  biggest  manure  pile 
in  town  is  made  Mayor,  and  I  must  say  that  the  Mayor  of 
one  village  I  know  surely  looks  it. 

While  I  would  not  mind  being  more  luxuriously  situated, 
I  will  consider  myself  lucky  if  I  never  know  any  lodgings 
more  uncomfortable  than  those  I  now  occupy.  If  we 
had  plenty  of  fuel  and  sufficient  oil  for  our  lamps  I  really 
could  ask  for  nothing  better.  I  am  getting  so  used  to  the 
illumination  furnished  by  my  trusty  candle  that  when  I 
get  back  to  civiHzation  I  will  be  rendered  owl-blind  by 


314  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

the  lights.  By  the  way,  while  I  think  of  it,  you  would 
certainly  confer  a  great  favor  on  me  if  you  would  mail  me 
a  box  of  indelible  pencils,  something  that  will  stand  up. 
The  lead  of  all  I  have  bought  over  here  is  rotten. 

We  hear  that  the  American  Government  has  decided,  at 
last,  to  treat  the  German  prisoners  in  the  camps  back  in 
the  States  AS  prisoners,  and  no  longer  as  star-boarders, 
which  news  creates  great  satisfaction  in  our  hearts.  It 
is  a  sign  that  the  country  is  gradually  awakening  to  the 
fact  that  it  is  at  war.  The  case  of  Secretary-of-War 
Baker  absorbs  much  interest.  His  testimony  regarding 
the  complete  equipment  of  all  the  troops  sent  over  cer- 
tainly created  comment.  Well,  this  will  have  to  be  all  for 
this  time.  I  hope  it  finds  you  and  Mother  as  well  and  as 
cheerful  as  your  last  letters  left  you.  My  regards  to  all 
the  friends.     With  much  love,  Quincy. 

February  13,  191 8. 

Dear  Mother  :  I  inclose  a  copy  of  our  war  paper,  The 
Stars  and  Stripes,  which  may  interest  you.  The  box  of 
cigars  came  yesterday,  and  many  thanks  to  you  and  Dad 
both.  Repeat  on  it  as  often  as  you  like.  The  cigars  are 
just  the  right  sort.  I  would  like  to  write  you  a  letter 
to-night  as  I  have  a  nice  fire  going  in  my  big  fireplace,  but 
there  is  urgent  necessity  for  my  taking  another  one  of 
those  bucket  baths. 

Much  love  to  both  of  you,  Quincy. 

P.S.  Your  letter  of  Jan.  18  just  to  hand.  The  in- 
closed clipping  showing  one  of  my  letters  as  printed  in 
The  Evening  Sun  interests  me  a  whole  lot  as  one  of  Gen. 
Pershing's  orders  is:  "don't  let  your  people  at  home 
print  your  letters  in  the  newspapers."  And  don't  do  it 
any  more,  for  it  would  be  just  about  as  hard  to  identify 
me  as  the  writer  of  that  letter  as  if  my  name  were  printed. 


Censorship  315 

And  if  there  is  anything  that  "Black  Jack"  is  understood 
to  mean  in  these  parts  it  is  what  he  says.  Quincy. 

February  17,  1918. 

Dear  Mother:  I  am  glad  to  know  that  my  letters 
have  been  reaching  you  uncensored,  glad  and  somewhat 
surprised,  too,  for  I  thought  maybe  the  base  censor  (the 
men  whose  letters  I  have  to  pass  upon  are  of  the  opinion 
that  all  censors  are  base  and  that  I  am  the  basest  of  the 
lot)  might  object  to  some  of  the  stuff  I  have  been  writing 
although  I  could  see  nothing  wrong  with  it  or  I  would  not 
have  written  it.  The  only  thing  I  have  had  interfered 
with  was  a  postcard  which  I  inclose  with  its  return  en- 
velope. I  was  admonished  that  American  soldiers  may 
not  write  postcards  to  persons  in  the  countries  of  our 
Allies,  although  we  may  write  them  letters.  This  seems 
hard  to  comprehend  on  its  face,  for  it  would  seem  that 
anyone  wishing  to  transmit  information  would  have  less 
trouble  doing  so  in  a  letter  than  on  a  postcard,  although 
there  must  be  some  sufficient  reason  for  the  ruling. 

As  to  the  erasing  of  the  ship's  name  in  the  two  letters 
you  refer  to,  and  the  elimination  of  the  dates,  especially 
on  the  note  mailed  in  New  York,  I  did  all  that  myself  to 
avoid  the  possibility  of  delaying  the  delivery  of  my  mes- 
sages. So  my  stuff  has  been  going  through  untouched. 
I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  the  men's  mail  receives  no 
further  scrutiny  than  that  which  the  company  officers 
give  it,  and  I  can  assure  you  that  so  far  as  this  company  is 
concerned  the  scrutiny  is  severe.  It  is  very  seldom  that 
any  man  says  anything  objectionable,  but  every  now  and 
then  some  smart  fellow  tries  to  slip  one  over. 

Your  inquiry  regarding  whether  I  have  wine  with  my 
meals  involves  one  point  on  which  vigilance  must  be 
exercised  in  censoring,  for  if  the  men  write  home  that  they 
can  get  anything  to  drink,  and  the  "White  Ribbons"  get 


3i6  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

hold  of  the  fact,  a  certain  sanctimonious  element  will 
raise  the  howl  that  our  soldiers  are  being  permitted  to 
become  drunkards.  As  you  know,  the  sale  of  champagne, 
cognac,  and  all  highly  intoxicating  liquors  to  officers,  or 
men  of  the  A.E.F,,  has  been  strictly  forbidden,  but 
"Red  Ink"  and  beer  are  permitted  within  certain  hours 
each  day.  Consequently  you  may  rest  assured,  since 
you  seem  so  inquisitive  on  the  subject,  that  I  enjoy  my 
light  wine  and  beer  whenever  I  feel  like  it. 

In  reference  to  the  prohibition  against  stronger  drinks, 
there  is  an  old  saying  in  the  army  "you  can't  beat  a 
soldier,"  but  as  far  as  this  company  is  concerned  the 
tendency  to  drink  to  excess  is  amazingly  small.  I  have 
been  surprised  more  than  I  can  tell  you  to  find  this  bunch 
of  soldiers,  or  any  bunch  of  soldiers,  as  orderly  and  law- 
abiding  as  it  is.  The  men  got  two  months'  pay  at  once 
the  other  day  and  there  was  hardly  any  dissipation  worth 
mentioning.  The  same  holds  true  regarding  their  morals 
in  general.  This  is  a  record  to  be  proud  of.  I  do  not 
beheve  that  all  the  soldiers  the  United  States  sends  over 
will  do  as  well  as  these,  but  I  do  believe  that  the  men  of 
this  company  will  continue  to  live  according  to  their  past 
high  standard. 

You  remember  I  always  spoke  highly  of  these  men  to 
you,  and  the  longer  I  am  associated  with  them  the  better 
I  think  of  them.  The  Sergeant  you  liked  so  much, 
Koester,  is  still  as  much  of  a  favorite  with  me  as  ever.  He 
has  been  off  to  a  special  training  school  and  is  likely  soon 
to  be  commissioned  a  Second  Lieutenant,  as  he  deserves  to 
be,  although  the  company  will  lose  in  him  a  Sergeant  that 
it  cannot  replace.  He  is  one  of  the  best  soldiers  in  the 
company,  and  his  parents  being  of  German  birth  bitterly 
opposed  his  entering  the  army  to  fight  against  their 
' '  Fatherland. ' '  There  is  no  question  of  his  loyalty,  either, 
so  you  see  German-Americans  are  not  all  bad. 


Importance  of  Lieutenants  3i7 

The  Captain,  Lieutenants  Younkin,  Rubel,  Nelson  and 
Pearsall  have  just  returned  from  special  school — quite  an 
extended  one,  so  you  may  rest  assured  that  I  have  had 
my  hands  full.  Although  I  did  not  go  to  school  I  did 
not  lose  anything  in  the  way  of  experience.  And  the 
Captain  was  pleased  with  the  condition  of  the  company 
when  he  returned,  too.  Lieutenant  Millikin  and  myself 
will  get  a  course  of  schooling  later,  but  I  would  prefer  to 
have  some  experience  at  the  real  thing  first.  I  am  sure 
that  the  benefit  would  be  much  greater  in  the  long  run. 

You  need  not  worry  about  me,  for  I  am  not  Hkely  to 
undergo  any  great  or  real  danger  for  some  time.  Indeed, 
it  would  surprise  me  very  much  if  any  extensive  Ameri- 
can offensive  should  be  launched  this  summer,  for  several 
reasons,  although  this  is  merely  a  guess,  and  is  not  to  be 
interpreted  as  meaning  anything.  I  can  say,  though, 
that  we  are  looking  for  the  much  heralded  German  drive, 
and  I  assure  you  we  are  ready  for  it  on  this  side  of  the 
Hindenburg  line.  I  note  in  the  Paris  papers  that  an 
offensive  against  Rumania  is  reported,  and  it  wouldn't 
surprise  me  greatly  if  this  should  be  the  next  thing  to 
develop.  Success  will  be  easier  there,  and  success  is 
necessary  to  keep  up  the  spirit  of  the  German  people. 

Regarding  my  personal  experience  since  I  have  been 
over  here,  I  will  say  that  while  two  silver  bars  are  more  to 
be  cherished  than  one  gold  or  silver  one  for  your  shoulder, 
rank  is  largely  a  relative  matter,  below  the  grade  of 
Major  particularly.  Owing  to  the  development  of  modern 
warfare,  good  lieutenants  are  more  essential  to  a  company 
than  a  good  captain.  I  am  happy  to  say  that  a  real  liking 
has  grown  up  between  Lieutenant  Nelson  and  myself. 
There  is  in  him  a  sort  of  "excellent  dumb  discourse,"  as 
Bill  Shakespeare  says,  which  is  satisfying.  He  has  less 
to  say  than  any  other  of  the  officers  in  the  company 
and  the  men  like  him  better  than  anyone  else. 


3i8  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

By  the  way,  he  tells  of  a  little  experience  while  up  on 
the  British  front  which  I  know  will  interest  you.  Toward 
dusk  one  day,  when  everything  had  been  quiet,  he  climbed 
out  on  the  edge  of  a  first-line  trench,  just  to  look  the 
scenery  over.  Well,  he  had  not  been  down  off  the  parapet 
more  than  ten  seconds  before  a  string  of  bullets  from  a 
Boche  machine  gun  whined  through  the  atmosphere  he 
had  been  displacing.  The  British  sentry  gave  him  a  horse 
laugh,  and  he  is  now  a  firm  advocate  of  my  "keep  your 
head  down"  policy. 

You  asked  me  some  time  ago  about  knitting  things  for 
me.  My  present  supply  should  last  me,  according  to  my 
present  rate  of  consumption,  through  another  four  years  of 
war,  but,  of  course,  I  may  never  see  again  the  stuff  that  I 
have  to  store  through  the  summer.  Therefore,  if  you  will 
send  me  a  sweater  and  helmet  in  time  for  cold  weather  this 
fall  it  may  be  a  wise  precaution.  You  ask  about  the  most 
useful  things  to  send,  these  are  sweaters,  helmets  and 
socks.  Also,  if  some  means  could  be  devised  of  knitting 
gloves  of  hard  coarse  wool  they  would  be  a  great  boon  to 
the  enlisted  men  who  wear  out  more  gloves  than  they  can 
get.  The  wristlets  do  not  afford  the  protection  necessary. 
They  are  great  to  wear  over  gloves  to  keep  the  wind  from 
sneaking  up  the  sleeves,  but  the  gloves  are  necessary  in  the 
first  place.     The  knitted  scarfs  are  not  very  practical. 

In  sending  things  to  our  men  over  here  one  great  want  is 
being  almost  totally  overlooked.  It  is  candy.  You  have 
no  idea  how  the  men  crave  it.  I  believe  that  even  those 
that  smoke  would  often  take  it  in  preference  to  tobacco. 
Sweets  are  extremely  scarce  and  the  prices  asked  for  them 
are  prohibitive.  Anyone  who  started  a  candy  fund  would 
confer  the  greatest  boon  I  know  of  on  the  American  sol- 
diers. Any  kind  of  candy,  the  very  cheapest  sort  that 
comes  in  buckets,  the  broken  sticks,  you  know,  would  be 
devoured  greedily.     I  hope  you  will  get  this  into  print 


Cry  for  Candy  3i9 

anonymously,  as  coming  from  one  who  knows.  Take 
up  the  matter  with  the  ' '  Red  Cross ' '  and  any  other  people 
who  are  interested  in  the  comfort  of  our  men  overseas. 
While  the  "  Doc  "  Peases  object  to  giving  to  tobacco  funds, 
I  do  not  beUeve  anyone  would  object  to  giving  to  a  candy 
fund. 

The  last  letter  of  yours  I  have  received  is  No.  7,  so  I  am 
still  shy  letters  5  and  6.  I  suppose  they  will  be  along  in 
due  season.  Speaking  of  seasons,  your  idea  that  France  is 
eternally  sunny  will  be  further  jarred  when  I  inform  you 
that  we  are  just  entering  on  a  rainy  period  which  we  are 
told  will  last  from  four  to  six  weeks.  I  am  prepared  for  it 
with  my  heavy  boots  and  shoes,  and  waterproof  coat,  so 
you  need  not  worry.  Well,  I  will  have  to  quit  for  this 
time;  I  have  made  quite  a  letter  of  it,  and  guess  you  need 
a  rest  anyway.  With  lots  of  love  for  both  of  you,  and 
regards  to  the  friends,  Quincy. 

February  24,  191 8. 

Dear  Mother  :  Old  Man  Winter  is  playing  the  same 
sort  of  trick  on  us  that  he  usually  plays  over  in  the  United 
States.  He  is  coming  back  for  a  httle  return  trip  after 
foohng  us  into  thinking  he's  on  his  way.  Fine  crisp 
weather  for  working,  though,  and  hope  it  lasts. 

Quincy. 

February  24,  1918. 

Dear  Mother  :  I  have  been  so  busy  lately  writing  in 
answer  to  your  letters  that  I  have  neglected  to  tell  you  a 
lot  of  things  about  my  life  here. 

I  have  been  Hving  in  the  best  room  of  a  little  inn  run  by 
a  Mme.  Delanne  who  is,  I  beHeve  firmly,  the  best  cooker 
of  French  fried  potatoes  in  France.  In  fact,  it  wouldn't 
surprise  me  at  all  to  learn  that  she  had  invented  the  dish 


320  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

and  been  decorated  with  the  Legion  of  Honor  therefor. 
Her  hot  chocolate  is  equally  fine,  and  we  consume  great 
quantities  of  both.  She  prepares  our  officers'  mess,  the 
provisions  being  supplied  by  us,  and  each  of  us  pays  her  a 
franc  a  day  for  her  services.  We  have  worked  her  nearly 
to  death  feeding  us.  At  meal  time  it  is  one  continuous 
yell  of  "Madame,  pommes  de  terre  tout  de  suite,  s'il  vous 
plait !"  and  "Madame,  chaud  chocolat  tout  de  suite,  s'il 
vous  plait!" 

It  didn't  take  her  a  day  to  name  us  "tout  de  suite 
Americans"  because  we  want  everything  right  on  the  dot. 
Her  regular  reply  when  we  ask  for  anything  is  "Voila, 
messieurs,  tout  de  suite,  a  la  minute!" 

We  don't  always  get  it  on  the  minute,  but  then  we 
demand  a  great  deal.  She  has  taken  mighty  good  care  of 
us,  looking  out  for  our  laundry  and  all  our  personal  wants 
and  putting  herself  out  to  make  us  as  comfortable  as 
possible. 

To  go  back  to  her  pommes  de  terre,  she  fries  them  in  a 
deep  bath  of  cocoa  butter,  and  in  an  old-fashioned  iron 
kettle  suspended  over  an  open  fire  by  a  crane,  in  a  great 
fireplace  of  the  sort  you  see  now  only  in  pictures,  over 
home.  Some  of  her  cooking  she  does  on  a  small  range,  but 
I  notice  that  whenever  she  wants  to  prepare  anything 
particularly  nice  she  goes  to  the  old  open  fireplace. 
There's  no  doubt  about  the  fact  that  there  is  a  flavor  about 
open  fireplace  cookery  which  modern  culinary  inventions 
cannot  supply. 

It  is  quite  an  experience  to  live  in  these  old  houses,  with 
their  ancient  open  fireplaces  and  also  to  sleep  in  these 
French  beds.  They  are  like  our  old  four-posters  without 
the  posts,  and  every  one  of  them  has  on  top  of  it  a  great 
down  pillow  as  wide  as  the  bed,  and  reaching  from  your 
feet  to  your  neck,  which  surely  keeps  in  the  heat.  These 
pillows  are  usually  made  of  red  silk,  and  are  stuffed  to  the 


A  la  Francaise  321 

thickness  of  about  a  foot.  They  and  the  beds  are  evi- 
dently heirlooms  which  have,  to  all  appearances,  been 
handed  down  in  each  family  from  the  time  of  Joan  of  Arc. 
There  is  hardly  a  room,  either,  in  which  there  is  not  either 
a  picture  or  a  statuette  of  Joan.  There  is  a  statuette  a 
foot  high  on  the  dresser  in  front  of  which  I  am  now  writing. 
There  is  also  a  diminutive  shrine  in  every  sleeping  apart- 
ment, with  a  crucifix  and  a  rosary,  for  the  population  is 
almost  entirely  Roman  Catholic. 

Also,  an  essential  of  every  chamber  in  every  house  in 
France  seems  to  be  at  least  one  clock,  the  more  ornate  the 
better,  which  positively  will  not  run  under  any  conditions. 
Many  of  these  timepieces  are  of  the  ' '  grandfather ' '  variety 
and  of  such  remote  antiquity,  judging  from  all  appear- 
ances, as  to  make  our  American  heirlooms  seem  infantile  in 
comparison.  Of  antique  chests  and  wardrobes  there  is 
the  greatest  profusion.  With  the  exception  of  a  few  iron 
beds  I  haven't  seen  a  piece  of  really  new  furniture  in  a 
single  house  I  have  entered.  Naturally  the  men  view 
these  French  people  as  hopelessly  behind  the  times,  and 
as  greatly  inferior  to  us  Americans. 

As  to  the  French  manner  of  living  we  have  come  in 
contact  with,  it  was  pretty  well  described  by  our  chief 
cook  who  said  to  me  the  day  we  moved  into  our  village : 
"Lieutenant,  I  had  to  chase  an  old  woman  and  her  ducks 
out  of  house  and  home  to  get  a  place  for  our  kitchen." 
That's  about  the  size  of  it.  The  animals  and  fowl  are 
members  of  the  family,  and  it  is  no  unusual  thing  for  a 
dwelling  to  be  built  to  house  the  human  contingent  in  one 
end,  and  the  rest  at  the  other.  It  looks  queer  to  see  right 
alongside  the  front  door  a  small  door  in  the  stone  wall 
through  which  the  chickens  and  ducks  pass  in  and  out. 
All  the  walls  are  of  stone.  I  haven't  seen  a  frame  resi- 
dence since  landing  in  France .  And  where  the  roofs  are  not 
of  tile  they  are  of  stone  too.     In  the  small  towns,  stone 


322  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

shingles,  chipped  from  a  slaty  sort  of  rock  common  in  this 
region,  are  the  regular  thing.  I  don't  believe  they  would 
know  over  here  what  a  wooden  shingle  was.  The  weight 
of  these  stone  roofs  must  be  enormous,  but  if  you  go  inside 
and  take  a  look  at  the  timbers  supporting  them  you 
understand  why  the  buildings  do  not  collapse.  These 
hewn  rafters  remind  me  of  the  sort  of  material  of  which 
the  frame  of  our  old  home  at  Statesville  is  made. 

For  water  supply  there  are  numerous  fountains  in  the 
smaller  towns,  and  in  the  cities  too,  although  the  latter 
have  regular  systems  of  waterworks  also.  In  every 
municipality  there  is  at  least  one  public  wash  house  for 
cleaning  clothes.  It  consists  of  a  shallow  stone  basin, 
some  25  by  50  feet,  holding  about  a  foot  of  water  which  is 
kept  always  clear  by  plenty  of  inlets  and  outlets  and  a 
copious  flow.  The  stone  sides  of  the  basin  are  sloped  at 
the  washboard  angle  and  the  washerwomen  scrub  the 
soiled  clothes  right  on  the  smooth  surface  of  the  rock. 
They  do  mighty  nice  jobs,  too,  I  find.  Over  each  wash 
house  there  is  a  roof,  but  there  is  never  any  provision  for 
fire,  and  the  laundresses'  work  looked  cruelly  cold  this 
winter. 

Everything  is  built  of  stone ;  you  might  think  that  there 
never  had  been  any  other  building  material  in  France. 
And  when  you  come  in  personal  contact  with  the  careful 
conservation  of  the  forests  over  here  you  understand  why. 
You  know  there  is  a  saying  that  if  you  kill  a  * '  nigger ' '  in 
Georgia  nobody  cares,  but  kill  a  "cracker's"  razorback 
hog  and  you  will  be  lynched.  Well,  if  you  chop  down  a 
sapling  as  big  as  your  wrist  over  here  in  France  you  are 
certainly  in  danger  of  judgment,  and  from  the  way  about 
forty  Frenchmen  start  to  chattering  at  you  about  it  you 
think  you're  in  danger  of  hell  fire.  You  may  think  no- 
body sees  you  make  the  raid,  but  before  you  get  through 
you  find  that  everybody  in  the  whole  department  must 


Fine  Forestry  323 

have  been  looking  at  you.  Naturally  these  people  have  to 
be  careful  of  their  forests.  If  they  had  not  watched  them 
for  generations  there  would  be  no  wood  at  all.  As  it  is, 
the  frequency  with  which  you  see  wooded  sections  is 
surprising.  It  is  a  pity  that  the  Americans  cannot 
exercise  a  little  foresight,  and  prevent  the  destruction  of 
the  forests  in  our  country. 

There  is  considerable  game  here,  too.  You  see  great 
flocks  of  wild  ducks,  and  although  the  wild  boars  keep 
under  cover  there  are  freshly  uprooted  sections  of  turf  on 
our  drill  ground  every  day  showing  that  they  have  been 
feeding  there  overnight.  Every  now  and  then  I  see  a 
bear's  carcass  hung  out  at  a  butcher's  shop,  and  I  hope  to 
get  a  taste  of  the  meat  sometime. 

Well,  enough  for  this  time.  Much  love  to  Dad  and 
yourself,  and  regards  to  all  the  rest.  Quincy. 

February  27,  1918. 

Dear  Mother:  When  you  cast  your  eyes  on  the 
smaller  of  the  two  pictures  inclosed  herewith  I  know  you 
will  remark:  "What  chance  have  the  Huns,  anyway?" 
But  the  larger  card  will  afford  the  necessary  comic  relief. 
My  friend,  Sol  Rubel,  and  I  certainly  look  like  the  Star 
Low  Comedy  Duo,  or  as  if  we  had  been  up  to  some  devil- 
ment or  other — and  maybe  we  had.  For  life  is  not  all  one 
monotonous  grind,  by  any  means. 

Never  before  laying  my  eyes  on  this  larger  picture 
had  I  suspected  myself  of  being  so  thoroughly  British, 
but  those  legs  convict  me  fully  and  finally.  And  the  cap, 
being  of  the  British  army  general  model,  adds  to  the  effect. 

This  is  the  first  opportunity  I  have  had  to  send  a  picture 
home,  but  I  hope  I  may  be  able  to  do  better  in  the  future. 
I  would  appreciate  a  picture  of  you  and  Dad. 

Much  love,  Quincy. 


324  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

The  photographs  were  small  and  very  unflattering  like- 
nesses of  himself  and  Lieutenant  Rubel.  In  the  smaller 
ones,  taken  separately,  both  looked  quite  unnecessarily 
grim  and  threatening.  The  larger  one  shows  them  to- 
gether, wreathed  in  smiles. 

March  3,  1918. 

Dear  Mother:  Here  is  a  programme  which  I  think 
will  interest  you.  I  went  to  see  the  Httle  French  farce  at 
one  of  those  Theatres  des  Poilus  you  have  read  about.  The 
male  contingent  of  the  stage  folk  was  made  up  of  soldiers; 
the  actresses  must  have  been  of  the  best  in  France  for  the 
play  was  done  as  well  as  the  best  you  see  on  Broadway.  I 
am  sorry  to  say  that  there  was  very  little  of  the  plot  I 
could  make  out,  but  the  acting  was  sufficiently  vivacious 
to  keep  my  attention.  Besides,  two  of  the  actresses  were 
unusually  easy  to  look  at  besides  being  real  artists. 

I  had  the  pleasure  of  having  dinner  in  the  same  dining 
room  with  the  players  before  the  show  and  the  meal  was 
as  good  as  the  play.  The  members  of  the  cast  certainly 
had  a  good  time,  and  everyone  else  had  a  good  time  watch- 
ing them.  You  would  never  have  thought,  had  you  not 
known,  that  these  people  were  citizens  of  a  country 
engaged  in  the  fiercest  war  in  history.  I  understand  that 
the  actors  of  established  reputation  while  required  to 
render  military  service  are  not  exposed  to  the  greatest 
danger.  The  men  who  took  part  in  this  performance  are 
employed  driving  trucks  along  the  lines  of  transportation. 
The  musical  part  of  the  program  was  rendered,  you  will 
note,  by  the  i68th  Regiment,  but  not  our  i68th.  Oddly 
enough  both  the  American  and  French  regiments  of  this 
number  are  located  in  this  same  section. 

The  audience  at  this  soldiers'  play  consisted  of  people 
from  the  town  as  well  as  soldiers,  and  I  was  struck  at 
the  remarkable  resemblance  of  the  civilians  to  our  own 


La  Belle  France  325 

people.  Had  I  been  deaf  so  that  I  might  not  have  been 
tipped  off  by  the  foreign  tongue  in  which  they  chattered, 
I  might  have  taken  them  for  Americans.  The  price  of 
admission  for  the  performance  was  three  francs,  and  it  was 
about  as  well  invested  as  any  money  I  have  spent  in 
France.  I  find  that  I  can  get  as  much  out  of  the  French 
movies  as  I  do  out  of  those  at  home,  for  I  can  read  easily 
the  explanatory  sentences  projected  on  the  screen  in 
French  as  you  have  them  in  English.  Thus  far  I  have 
been  unable  to  find  any  of  the  weekly  film  reviews  of  the 
news,  however,  and  I  miss  these  greatly.  The  price 
of  the  movies  is  twenty-five  centimes,  or  about  five 
cents. 

While  on  this  show  subject  I  might  mention  the  fact 
that  often  as  I  have  sat  watching  the  fog  rising  over  the 
lake  in  front  of  my  window  I  have  thought  of  those  stage 
fogs  we  used  to  see  at  the  Metropolitan  and  the  Man- 
hattan. I  surely  have  grand  opera  scenery  all  around  me, 
so  much  of  it,  that  somehow  the  whole  life  in  which  I  am 
moving  seems  unreal  and  dreamlike.  The  longer  I  remain 
here  the  more  firmly  convinced  I  am  that  this  is  the  most 
beautiful  country  in  the  world.  Yet  this  is  not  the  best 
part  of  France.  The  ground  is  very  rocky  and  unproduc- 
tive. I  have  seen  fields  in  which  I  believe  fully  three 
quarters  of  the  matter  turned  by  the  plow  was  stony, 
running  all  the  way  from  pebbles  to  pieces  of  flint  as  big  as 
your  fist.  How  anything  ever  grew  on  it  I  do  not  see. 
The  people  raise  many  cattle,  and  cheese  foundries  are 
the  principal  industries  except  in  certain  centres. 

I  visited  a  glass  factory  and  saw  the  blowers  at  work 
making  everything  from  lamp  chimneys  to  champagne 
glasses  and  decanters.  In  another  building  skilled  work- 
men were  finishing  cut  glass  products.  Most  of  the  em- 
ployees were  women  and  girls.  There  wasn't  a  man  in 
the  place  fit  for  military  service.     The  male  portion  of  the 


326  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

working  force  consisted  of  young  boys,  or  men  too  old  to 
stand  the  work  in  the  trenches. 

I  sent  you  a  card  several  days  ago  remarking  that  Old 
Man  Winter,  after  having  to  all  appearances  departed, 
had  decided  to  pay  us  a  return  visit,  and  this  reminds  me 
to  remark  on  something  I  had  intended  to  mention  all 
winter:  the  fashion  in  which  the  kiddies  run  around 
barelegged,  even  in  the  bitterest  weather.  The  Scotch 
kilties  have  nothing  on  these  French  kiddies  in  respect  to 
bare  shanks.  I  cannot  tell  you  how  funny  one  of  these 
diminutive  urchins  looks  cavorting  around  in  the  snow 
with  a  pair  of  sabots,  each  one  nearly  as  large  as  his  head, 
hung  on  to  pipe  stem  legs,  which  you  eye  with  the  expecta- 
tion of  seeing  them  broken  short  off  by  the  tonnage  of 
sabot,  at  any  minute.  Even  the  big  fifteen-year-old  boys 
go  barelegged  thus.  But  I  might  mention  that,  while  the 
legs  of  young  France  are  slender,  there  must  be  a  sudden 
expansion  all  at  once  around  the  twentieth  year,  for  never 
have  I  seen  sturdier  underpinning  than  that  which  sup- 
ports France's  soldiery.  There  must  be  something  ex- 
ceedingly invigorating  about  that  fresh  air  treatment  for 
the  shins. 

I  have  had  it  in  my  mind  also,  many  times,  to  tell  you 
about  our  latest  company  mascot,  a  dog,  of  course.  He 
was  donated  to  us  by  a  Major  back  from  the  front  who 
found  himself  suddenly  saddled  with  a  roving  commission 
which  rendered  keeping  a  dog  impossible.  So  we  got  the 
pup,  a  diminutive  black  ball,  just  about  the  size  to  fit 
in  your  pocket,  and  he  was  ensconced  in  the  guard  house, 
that  being  the  only  place  where  there  was  a  fire  constantly 
going,  and  there  was  no  danger  of  his  being  frozen  to  death. 
As  he  hung  out  at  the  guard  house  he  was  known  as  ' '  the 
guard  house  bum,"  the  term  applied  to  the  soldier  who 
is  always  under  lock  and  key.  This,  shortened  for  con- 
venience sake,  gives  our  mascot's  name:  Bum.     He  has 


Universal  Favorite  327 

grown  astonishingly  fast,  and  is  already  large  enough  to  be 
always  where  he  has  no  business,  to  be  stealing  shoes, 
leggings  and  other  equipment,  and  making  himself  the  life 
of  the  company  generally.  He  swarms  into  everything 
everywhere  with  the  result  that  he  usually  resembles  an 
animated  mudpie  more  than  a  dog,  but  when  the  weather 
gets  warmer  and  we  can  wash  him,  we  can  correct  that. 
He  has  an  uncontrollable  inquisitiveness  regarding,  but  a 
wholesome  respect  for  cats.  Altogether  he  is  some  dog, 
and  is  about  the  first  of  his  kind  I  have  been  genuinely 
attached  to,  although  I  must  admit  he  has  given  my  dig- 
nity some  rude  knocks.  On  more  than  one  occasion  at 
retreat — a  very  solemn  function — when  I  have  been 
standing  rigidly  at  salute  during  the  playing  of  the  Star 
Spangled  Banner,  and  the  company  equally  rigid  at  present 
arms  behind  me,  he  has  come  sailing  out  of  the  kitchen  and 
cut  circles  around  my  legs  and  yipped  at  me,  thereby  send- 
ing a  titter  down  the  entire  line  and  all  but  breaking  up  the 
ceremony.  I  venture  to  say  that  he  would  be  missed,  if 
lost,  more  than  any  other  one  member  of  the  company,  not 
excepting  the  Captain.  He  is  spoiled,  in  a  canine  way, 
worse  than  your  Sweet  Cat.     I  hope  we  do  not  lose  him. 

I  am  going  on  the  last  cigars  of  that  box  Dad  sent  me, 
so  you  can  repeat  just  as  often  as  is  convenient.  The  men 
who  write  home  for  tobacco  are  divided  about  half-and- 
half  in  declaring,  the  one  that  this  French  tobacco  is  so 
strong  it  would  knock  a  mule  down,  and  the  other  that  the 
darn  stuff  is  so  weak  you  can't  tell  you  are  smoking  it. 
Personally,  I  have  got  some  very  good  tobacco  here,  but 
then  I  prefer  the  home  cigars,  and  I  have  a  notion  that 
half  the  satisfaction  I  get  out  of  them  is  in  receiving  them. 
You  have  no  idea  how  much  the  receipt  of  mail  means  to 
all  of  us.  Somehow  there  has  been  another  jam  in  the 
mail  service,  and  we  have  not  had  anything  from  home 
to  speak  of  in  a  fortnight.     The  package  from  Mrs. 


328  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

containing  the  cigars  and  the  diary  came,  however,  as  a 
very  pleasant  surprise  on  Washington's  Birthday,  and  I 
sat  down  at  once  and  wrote  her  a  note  thanking  her. 

The  cHpping  from  Le  Matin  which  I  enclose  about  New 
York's  practice  of  self-denial  may  be  exactly  according  to 
facts,  but,  knowing  New  Yorkers  as  I  do,  I  have  my  doubts 
as  to  whether  they  are  visiting  upon  themselves  any  such 
frightfulness  in  the  way  of  self-denial  as  is  here  outlined. 
Certainly  the  people  over  here  do  not  seem  to  have  found  it 
necessary  to  deny  themselves  greatly.  There  is  plenty  to 
eat  for  all,  and  the  prices  are  by  no  means  prohibitive. 
For  instance,  eggs  bring  from  four  to  five  francs  a  dozen, 
which  is  about  the  price  they  were  fetching  in  New  York 
when  I  left. 

The  news  is  very  boring  lately,  there  being  nothing 
happening  worth  telling  up  front  so  far  as  the  papers  we 
see  indicate.  The  Russian  situation  keeps  progressing 
from  bad  to  worse,  until  I  cease  to  have  any  opinion 
whatever  regarding  it.  The  one  thing  developed  by  it 
thus  far  seems  to  be  that  making  peace  with  Kultur  is 
equivalent  to  being  conquered  by  Kultur. 

Hoping  that  this  finds  all  well,  with  much  love  for  Dad 
and  yourself,  Quincy. 

March  6,  1918. 

Dear  Mother  :  Just  at  the  last  minute  before  closing 
my  letter  of  the  3rd,  I  received  the  three  pictures  I  in- 
closed. Here  are  three  more.  The  groups  include  all  of 
us  officers  at  this  place.  They  are  very  good  indeed,  I 
think.  You  will  note  that  the  pictures  show  us  in  two 
different  gas  masks.  We  are  supplied  with  the  most 
complete  anti-gas  equipment  that  has  been  furnished  to 
any  troops  in  the  war,  so  we  are  protected  in  that  respect 
as  well  as  we  can  be. 


Gas  Boomerang  329 

If  properly  used  this  protection  is  absolutely  sure. 
Therefore  you  needn't  lose  any  sleep  over  the  dreaded  gas. 
Because  of  their  lack  of  material  the  Germans  have  a  mask 
which  furnishes  them  wholly  inadequate  protection,  which 
explains  their  present  agitation  for  the  elimination  of  this 
"inhuman"  means  of  warfare — that  and  the  fact  that 
experience  has  proved  that  weather  conditions  favor  us 
six  times  in  the  use  of  gas  to  once  for  them.  So  they  will 
get  plenty  of  their  own  medicine  in  the  long  run. 

Love,  QuiNCY. 

The  pictures  enclosed  were  photographs  of  nine  offi- 
cers of  the  Company,  including  himself,  wearing  their  gas 
masks.  They  are  shown  standing  on  a  stone  bridge.  It  is 
hard  to  say  whether  the  effect  is  more  comical  or  grue- 
some.    Needless  to  say,  all  are  totally  unrecognizable. 

Apropos  of  his  mention  in  the  letter  of  March  3,  of 
attending  a  show  at  one  of  the  Theatres  des  Poilus,  Mills 
also  spoke  in  a  letter  to  Mrs.  John  Morris,  a  friend  and 
neighbor  of  the  family,  of  the  French  soldiers  at  a  motion 
picture  play.  He  said:  "The  audience  was  composed 
entirely  of  soldiers,  mostly  French.  They  romped  like 
children — or  kittens — in  the  bright  moonlight  outside 
after  the  show.  I  have  never  seen  anything  to  equal  the 
gayety  of  these  poilus.  They  seem  never  to  have  heard  of 
worry.  One  of  the  films  last  night  was  a  John  Bunny 
feature.  It  made  me  feel  queer  to  watch  the  acting  of  a 
man  who  has  been  dead  two  years." 


CHAPTER   XI 

Real  War — The  i68th  Goes  into  the  Trenches  at  Badonviller — 
Experiences  under  Fire — Fighting  and  Resting — Marvels  of 
Civilian  Courage. 

Somewhere  in  France  [Badonviller],  March  15,  1918. 

Dear  Mr.  Luby  :  Well,  we're  just  back  from  doing  our 
first ' '  hitch  in  hell ' '  and  I  assure  you  I  have  plenty  to  write 
about.  No  hairbreadth  escapes  for  myself,  to  speak  of, 
although  I  know  what  the  smash  of  a  shrapnel  shell  explo- 
sion feels  like  when  it  drives  the  air  up  against  your  body, 
and  how  the  spatter  of  the  shrapnel  charge  sounds  lighting 
all  around  you.  Also,  I  can  assure  you  that  there  is  noth- 
ing pleasant  about  the  whine  of  a  sniper's  bullet,  much  like 
the  noise  made  by  an  angry  hornet,  penetrating  inquisitive- 
ly into  the  trench  atmosphere  in  your  immediate  vicinity. 

My  company  was  extremely  fortunate  in  suffering 
no  casualties  worse  than  a  few  wounded,  but  this  does  not 
detract  from  the  fact  that  the  men  bore  themselves  like 
veterans.  Their  only  regret  on  coming  out  was  that  they 
hadn't  had  the  opportunity  to  come  in  personal  contact 
with  Fritz.  There  is  no  doubt  about  the  fighting  quality 
of  the  American  soldier.  We  were  sent  in  to  get  our  first 
experience  in  a  "quiet"  sector.  It  was  quiet  when  we 
went  in — now  it  very  closely  resembles  a  hornet's  nest 
into  which  someone  has  poked  a  sharp  stick.  When  the 
Boches  found  there  were  Americans  there  they  undertook 
to  pull  off  a  raid  similar  to  the  one  described  in  the  Satur- 
day Evening  Post  of  December  29,  191 7,  under  the  caption 

330 


Trench  Raiding  331 

of  ' '  The  First  Raid. ' '  If  you  didn 't  read  that  story  get  it 
and  read  it.  So  far  as  it  goes,  it  is  identical  with  the 
official  report,  excepting  of  course  the  incidents  culled  by 
the  writer  from  the  wounded  in  the  hospital.  The  thing 
that  amazed  me  was  that  the  printing  of  so  much  of  the 
truth  was  permitted. 

Artillery  support  was  lacking  for  our  men  in  that  first 
raid;  this  time  it  wasn't,  and  the  Huns  not  only  got  no 
prisoners  but  suffered  severe  punishment.  Then,  in  a  day 
or  so,  we  "put  on  a  show" — as  army  parlance  goes  for 
starting  a  fight,  just  to  show  them  that  whenever  they 
start  anything  with  American  troops  they  can  expect 
better  than  they  send.  For  every  shell  they  sent  over 
in  their  attack,  they  got  back  at  least  five.  It  is  no 
exaggeration  to  say  that  their  front  line  in  this  sector  was 
literally  mashed  to  pieces,  so  completely  annihilated  by 
great  shells  that  the  Huns  have  made  no  attempt  at 
reconsolidation,  but  have  simply  withdrawn  for  some  300 
yards  depth  on  a  considerable  front. 

During  this  fight,  as  during  our  stay  at  the  front,  I  was 
on  the  battalion  staff,  and  I  had  the  good  fortune  to  be 
able  to  witness  the  whole  show  from  the  top  floor  of  head- 
quarters. From  the  window  on  one  side  of  the  mansion 
used  as  a  headquarters  building  I  could  see,  by  the  aid  of 
my  field  glasses,  the  havoc  being  wrought  by  our  shell  fire, 
and  from  the  windows  on  the  other  side  I  could  see  the 
effect  of  the  German  shell  on  our  own  batteries — or  where 
they  thought  our  batteries  were.  You  have  heard  that 
the  Germans'  powder  is  now  of  inferior  quality;  I  can 
testify  that  this  is  true,  for  I  believe  that  full  50  per  cent 
of  the  shells  that  hit  among  our  batteries  were  "duds,"  or 
failed  to  explode.  Their  shells  were  striking  about  300 
yards  from  headquarters,  and  I  could  see  clearly  when 
they  struck  and  when  they  failed  to  explode ;  a  detachment 
of  engineers  was  busy  all  the  next  morning  setting  off  the 


332  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

"duds."  As  further  proof  of  the  poor  quaUty  of  German 
ammunition,  out  of  a  series  of  twelve  shots  which  I 
counted  while  they  were  being  fired  at  a  French  airplane, 
one  afternoon  while  I  was  in  the  trenches,  only  three 
exploded.  The  Frenchman  flew  low  over  the  Hun  posi- 
tions, and  didn't  seem  to  pay  any  attention  at  all  to  the 
fire  directed  at  him. 

The  noise  of  the  bombardment  was  an  exceedingly  excit- 
ing thing  to  a  freshman  at  war.  Right  behind  us  the  75s 
were  barking  viciously  all  the  time;  the  machine  gun 
barrage  went  over  us,  and  there  is  no  sound  quite  as  wicked 
as  that  made  by  machine  gun  bullets  cracking  like  millions 
of  whips  in  the  air  overhead ;  from  away  back  to  the  rear 
came  the  thunder  of  the  great  guns  pumping  away  in  a 
steady  roar  that  made  the  walls  rock  and  the  windows 
rattle  as  if  they  were  going  to  fall  out.  The  sound  of 
heavy  artillery  in  a  bombardment  is  more  like  the  steady 
pulsating  of  a  great  ship's  engine  than  anything  else  I  can 
think  of ;  it  has  the  same  resolute  thrust  and  drive ;  there  is 
something  intoxicating  about  it;  there  is  nothing  else 
which  can  inspire  the  men  with  confidence  so  much. 

But  don't  think  I  was  observing  things  from  absolute 
safety.  Shrapnel  burst  all  around  us  during  the  bombard- 
ment, felling  one  French  soldier  in  the  street  before  head- 
quarters. And  a  German  airman  flew  up  and  down  over 
us  sprinkling  the  streets  with  his  machine  gun ;  unfortu- 
nately for  him  he  ran  across  the  line  of  sights  of  one  of  our 
machine  guns  as  he  started  home,  and  his  machine  landed 
in  flames  just  back  of  his  front  line.  For  my  part,  head- 
quarters was  just  about  the  last  place  I  wanted  to  be  when 
there  was  a  show  on,  but  I  always  had  to  report  there 
forthwith.  The  afternoon  I  walked  into  the  remains  of 
the  town  in  which  our  headquarters  were  located,  a  big 
German  shrapnel  shell  burst  where  the  housetops  had 
been,  about  100  yards  ahead  of  me.     It  was  one  of  five 


Under  Fire  333 

with  which  the  Huns  repeated  their  "registration"  on 
headquarters,  just  to  remind  us  that  they  had  it  down  pat. 
Everybody  fully  expected  the  headquarters  building  to  be 
wiped  off  the  map  every  time  anything  started,  and  the 
amazing  thing  is  that  it  is  still  standing  untouched,  for  the 
Huns  know  its  exact  use  as  well  as  its  exact  location. 

The  town  in  which  it  stands,  about  half  a  mile  back  of 
the  lines,  has  been  about  half  destroyed  by  shell  fire.  I 
could  not  accustom  myself  to  seeing  a  civilian  population 
there,  the  women  going  about  their  household  tasks  as  if 
nothing  unusual  were  happening,  and  only  ducking  in- 
doors when  a  burst  of  shrapnel  let  go  a  little  closer  than 
usual,  and  the  children  trotting  daily  to  school  in  a  build- 
ing, the  windows  of  which  are  barricaded  with  logs  against 
shell  splinters.  But  most  of  the  civilians  had  moved  out 
by  the  time  we  lef  t ;  a  number  of  houses  were  hit  during 
our  occupancy,  and  everybody  expects  the  rest  of  the  town 
to  be  razed  by  German  guns  now  that  it  is  sheltering 
Americans  who  raise  so  much  trouble.  The  last  night  I 
was  there,  a  big  shell  let  loose  so  close  to  the  building  in 
which  I  was  bunked  that  the  concussion  raised  me  right  up 
off  my  bunk,  and  a  similar  dainty  calling  card  dropped 
right  at  the  corner  of  the  house  the  next  morning  just  be- 
fore we  left.  We  are  now  in  reserve  in  a  town  further 
back,  but  still  within  shell  range.  By  the  time  you  get 
this  we  will  be  back  in  our  divisional  area  again  getting 
ready  for  our  next  hitch. 

One  of  the  greatest  worries  up  front  is  gas.  The  Ger- 
mans make  little  use  of  cloud  gas  in  this  region,  but  they 
are  always  sending  over  bursts  of  gas  shells.  One  burst 
in  the  road  about  twenty  yards  ahead  of  me  the  day  I 
went  up  front,  close  enough  to  spatter  mud  on  me.  But  it 
wasn't  close  enough  to  get  the  gas  to  me  before  I  had  my 
respirator  on. 

The  soldier  is  required  to  be  able  to  put  on  his  anti-gas 


334  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

paraphernalia  in  six  seconds.  I  got  mine  on  in  about  6-l0 
of  a  second,  and  by  the  time  the  second  was  up  had  high- 
balled it  into  a  friendly  dugout.  That  was  about  the  only 
time  I  put  in  in  a  dugout  while  the  shells  were  popping  up 
front,  but  take  my  word  for  it  I  had  to  conquer  an  almost 
irresistible  impulse  to  duck  into  every  dugout  I  passed  on 
my  way  to  headquarters  (and  no  dugout)  whenever  there 
was  a  show  on.  I  was  twice  slightly  gassed,  but  suffered  no 
serious  effects  either  time.  I  inclose  three  pictures  which 
may  interest  you.  In  one  of  the  groups  we  are  wearing  our 
French  gas  masks;  in  the  other  we  have  the  English  box 
respirators  up  at  the  alert  position  ready  to  put  on  in  the 
six  seconds  I  mentioned. 

Please  forward  this  letter  to  my  Mother,  for  her  to  read 
as  soon  as  you  have  finished  reading  it,  but  do  not  send  her 
the  pictures  as  I  intend  these  for  you .  I  have  mailed  others 
to  her  already. 

I  see  by  the  papers  that  Secretary  Baker  is  over  paying 
us  a  visit.  I  hope  he  will  see  things  just  as  they  are,  and 
will  make  an  exact  statement  regarding  them  on  his  return. 
He  will  find  soldiers  to  be  proud  of,  men  who  deserve  the 
fullest  equipment  and  preparation  possible  in  order  that 
they  may  make  the  most  of  the  will  to  fight  with  which 
they  are  unquestionably  inspired. 

I  have  received  from  home  copies  of  several  of  my  letters 
printed  in  The  Evening  Sun,  but  suppose  that  before  this 
reaches  you  my  letter  will  be  received  requesting  that  no 
more  of  my  letters  be  printed,  and  stating  the  reason 
for  the  request. 

Give  my  regards  to  all.  Hoping  this  finds  you  all  feel- 
ing as  fine  as  I  do  after  sixteen  hours'  sleep  I  enjoyed  last 
night  on  "coming  out,"  Mills. 

In  the  last  five  letters  included  in  the  foregoing  chapter, 
those  of  February  24  and  after,  Mills  had  been  resorting 


A  Matter  of  Dates  335 

to  a  benevolent  camouflage.  They  read  as  if  they  were 
written  at  St.  Ciergues,  Hke  their  predecessors  and  amid 
the  comparative  peace  of  the  training  period.  In  reahty, 
the  battalion  had  left  the  village  on  February  19,  had 
reached  the  fighting  front,  had  been  in  combat,  had  under- 
gone the  experiences  described  in  the  letter  just  given,  and 
was  safely  back  in  the  rear  for  rest  and  recovery  after  its 
first  tour  of  duty  on  the  front  lines. 

Just  what  the  mental  process  was  which  led  Mills  to  this 
course,  it  is  not  easy  to  figure  out,  for  he  must  have  known 
that  if  anything  happened  to  him,  his  parents  would  be 
notified,  while  by  no  means  could  letters  telling  of  his  move 
to  the  front  reach  them  before  that  first  period  of  acute 
peril  was  over.  There  is  no  use  speculating  on  the  point ; 
his  motive  was  unquestionably  kindly;  probably,  when  he 
wrote,  he  felt  so  near  to  home  and  kindred  that  the 
details  of  the  time  factor  did  not  impress  themselves 
on  his  consciousness.  At  any  rate,  even  in  breaking 
the  news  directly  to  his  parents  he  took  the  method 
of  gradual  approach  as  the  three  succeeding  notes  will 
show: 

March  10,  191 8. 

Dear  Mother:  Only  time  for  a  note  now.     Your 

letter  of  Feb.  2  and  one  from  came  to-day.     Also 

two  from  "the  same  old  Bill  Gramer,"  saying  that  he  had 
started  a  package  of  smokables  on  its  way  to  me.  Guess 
it  will  be  in  soon. 

Am  having  some  interesting  experiences  to  write  you 
about  later.  If  this  paper  smells  of  powder,  not  the 
talcum  sort,  do  not  be  surprised  or  alarmed,  for  I  will  be 
a  good  many  miles  from  the  line  long  before  you  receive 
this  missive. 

Love  to  all, 

QUINCY. 


336  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

March  13,  191 8. 

Dear  Mother  :  Within  a  few  days  I  hope  to  be  able  to 
write  you  more  in  detail  regarding  some  highly  interesting 
experiences  up  here  at  the  front  line.  Our  sector  was 
quiet — when  we  got  here,  but  we  sure  stirred  things  up. 
Friend  Fritz  tried  to  start  something,  but  got  a  dam  sight 
more  than  he  sent. 

We  will  be  back  in  our  previous  location  for  some  time. 
It  will  seem  a  little  odd  not  to  see  air  fights,  and  hear  artil- 
lery working  all  the  time. 

Haven't  had  any  hairbreadth  escapes,  but  haven't  been 
in  what  you  might  term  exact  safety,  by  any  means. 

Love  for  Dad  and  yourself,  Quincy. 

The  following  dated  March  15  with  its  enclosure  dated 
March  10  and  its  explanation  make  clear  his  intention 
and  his  plan.  After  this,  there  was  no  more  attempt  to 
maintain  false  confidence.  His  proximity  to  danger  once 
revealed  had  to  be  taken  for  granted  as  a  constant  factor. 

March  15,  1918. 

Dear  Mother  :  Here's  a  letter  which  I  wrote  with  the 
full  intention  of  taking  it  up  front  and  sending  it  from 
there,  so  that  you  would  not  miss  hearing  from  me 
regularly ;  and  then  I  had  to  rush  off  in  such  a  hurry,  being 
sent  off  on  almost  no  notice  a  day  ahead  of  the  company, 
that  I  left  this  letter  in  my  trunk ! 

I  send  it  now  at  the  same  time  that  I  am  sending  a 
letter  to  Mr.  Luby,  descriptive  of  some  of  my  experiences 
of  recent  days.  I  am  asking  him  to  forward  it  to  you  as 
soon  as  he  reads  it,  and  I  suppose  it  will  hardly  be  neces- 
sary to  ask  you  to  make  a  copy  of  it.  Please  pardon  me 
for  not  sending  you  this  letter  first,  but  I  feel  that  I  owe 
him  such  a  letter,  and  I  do  not  want  to  repeat  all  that  I 
say  in  it  in  another  letter  to  you.     Time's  too  scarce. 


Lamentable  Mails  337 

I  am  very  well  indeed,  having  enjoyed  sixteen  hours' 
sleep  last  night  to  enable  me  to  catch  up  what  I  had  lost  in 
the  nine  nights  previous.  Hope  this  finds  you  and  Dad 
well,  also  the  Morrises  and  other  friends. 

QUINCY. 


[The  Enclosure] 


March  lo,  191 8. 


Dear  Mother:  I  have  just  received  your  letters  of 
January  13  and  15,  all  the  more  welcome  for  their  being 
nearly  two  months  old.  I  am  sorry  to  note  that,  from 
your  reference  to  the  passage  of  a  fortnight  between  the 
receipt  of  letters  from  me,  the  mail  service  in  your  direc- 
tion is  also  far  from  all  that  could  be  desired.  For  my  part, 
I  have  long  ago  ceased  to  look  for  mail.  When  I  get  it  I 
am  just  ahead  that  much  more  than  I  expected.  I 
realize  that  the  difficulties  of  transportation  are  great,  but 
I  do  believe  that  the  army  mail  service  could  be  greatly 
improved  at  no  additional  cost,  and  no  improvement 
could  contribute  more  to  the  contentment  of  the  men. 

I  am  glad  you  sent  me  the  enclosure  from and 

I  am  surprised  to  learn  of  his  intention  of  entering  the  aero 
service.  I  am  not  well  enough  acquainted  with  the  de- 
mands of  an  observer  to  judge  his  fitness  for  the  work.  If 
he  undertakes  it  I  hope  he  will  find  himself  able  to  render 
useful  service  there.  Candidly,  I  do  not  see  that  at  the 
present  stage  of  the  game,  it  is  incumbent  upon  a  man  in 
his  position  to  quit  the  support  of  his  family.  The  aero 
service  is  hazardous,  as  you  know,  although  much  less 
so  in  the  observation  than  in  the  combat  branch,  and  he 
should  be  sure  that  his  family  will  be  well  provided  for  in 
the  future  if  he  goes  into  it. 

Many  thanks  for  your  solicitude,  but  there  is  nothing 
that  I  can  think  of  in  addition  to  the  cigars  which  you 


338  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

need  send  me.  Of  the  necessities  of  life  we  have  sufficient, 
and  of  some  of  the  luxuries  too.  One  of  these  I  might 
mention  is  French  chocolate,  which  owes  its  particularly 
delicious  flavor,  possibly,  to  the  fact  that  they  make  it  al- 
ways in  heavy  earthenware  vessels.  You  might  try  this  in 
making  cocoa  or  chocolate,  and  see  if  there  is  any  difference. 
After  making  a  supply  of  chocolate  the  French  cook  places 
it  in  an  enameled  ware  receptacle  to  keep  it  hot,  but  the 
actual  preparation  is  always  in  an  earthen  dish. 

To  get  back  to  the  cigars,  I  will  thank  you  in  advance 
now  for  the  second  box,  which  will  probably  arrive  just 
about  the  time  my  present  supply  gives  out.  Which 
means,  of  course,  that  the  dispatching  of  the  third  box, 
and  then  the  fourth,  etc.,  etc.,  will  be  in  order  after  the 
receipt  of  this  letter. 

The  clipping  of 's  work  which  you  sent  interests 

me,  but  I  am  glad  I  am  not  over  here  to  write  stuff  about 
the  war  while  it  is  going  on.  After  it  is  over  will  be  time 
enough  for   that.     War   corresponding   is   done   almost 

entirely  second-hand,  and  I  doubt  if will  see  any  real 

action.  If  I  chance  to  meet  him,  I  will  congratulate  him 
on  having  joined  the  "Deep  Dugout  brigade,"  an  appel- 
lation relished  by  those  to  whom  it  is  applied  just  about 
as  much  as  * '  slacker ' '  is. 

This  reminds  me  that  we  are  having  quite  a  laugh  on 
Lieutenant  Rubel,  because  he  is  in  receipt  of  a  draft  board 
notice  that  has  been  forwarded  to  him  all  the  way  from  the 
United  States  summoning  him  peremptorily  to  appear  and 
be  examined  for  military  service,  and  giving  him  large 
chunks  of  hell  for  not  having  presented  himself  sooner. 
We  call  him  "The  Slacker." 

Your  tentative  suggestion  that  I  may  have  celebrated 
my  birthday  with  wine  and  song,  but  without  the  women 
was  a  very  safe  hazard.  The  women  aren't — not  in  this 
province — although  I  have  been  given  to  understand  by 


Longing  for  a  Drive  339 

more  experienced  veterans  who  have  been  camping  in 
France  ever  since  September  that  it  is  possible  to  find  very 
pleasant  company  in  the  larger  cities  further  south.  Paris 
is  forbidden  to  American  soldiers  and  officers  alike  for  the 
reason  that  everybody  wanted  to  swarm  there,  so  it  may 
be  that  I  may  not  be  able  to  go  there  for  some  time.  But 
other  places  are  spoken  of  as  being  fine  cities  to  spend 
furloughs  in,  Nice  in  particular,  so  I  will  not  be  at  a  loss 
for  somewhere  to  go  when  the  opportunity  presents  itself. 
I  have  a  notion  that  it  may  be  some  time,  however,  before 
I  get  that  opportunity.  Each  officer  and  soldier  is  sup- 
posed to  get  ten  days'  leave  after  each  four  months  of  for- 
eign service,  unless  the  exigencies  of  the  service  prevent. 

I  have  a  notion  that  such  exigencies  are  likely  to  arise. 
If  the  Boches  start  that  drive  with  which  von  Hindenburg 
is  going  to  "end  the  war  in  three  months,"  there  won't  be 
many  furloughs  for  awhile,  but  we  are  hoping  the  drive 
starts,  for  the  harder  the  Huns  hammer  the  more  of  them 
the  Allies  will  kill,  which  is  what  we  came  over  to  help  do. 
The  Germans  may  be  able  to  make  dents  here  and  there 
by  smashing,  but  they  will  never  be  able  to  break  through. 
The  Russian  collapse  may  prolong  the  thing  for  some  time 
but  there  can  be  but  one  end.  What  I  am  afraid  of  is 
that  the  Germans  will  not  drive  on  the  Western  front ;  but 
I  am  encouraged  to  hope  that  they  will  by  the  fashion  in 
which  they  have  always  pursued  the  offensive. 

I  am  glad  that  you  feel  about  me  as  you  say  you  do  in 
your  letter  written  on  my  birthday,  and  that  you  are  not 
making  the  great  mistake  of  worrying.  If  I  do  not  come 
back,  why  then  "that  will  be  too  bad,"  as  they  say  in 
the  army,  but  there  might  be  a  great  many  things  worse. 
Any  soldier  that  comes  into  unfortunate  collision  with  a 
German  bullet  or  other  weapon  is  "out  of  luck, "  in  army 
phraseology,  but  there  are  lots  worse  ways  of  being  out  of 
luck.     And  if  the  unlucky  individual  happens  to  be  an 


340  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

officer,  the  commentor  always  adds  the  phrase,  "but  it 
means  promotion  for  somebody." 

Speaking  of  war  corresponding,  as  I  was  awhile  ago,  I 
intended  to  remark  that  the  story  on  "The  First  Raid  "  in 
the  Saturday  Evening  Post  for  December  29,  191 7,  amazes 
me  by  the  frankness  with  which  the  statement  of  so  much 
of  the  facts  was  permitted  by  the  censor.  There  was  more 
to  tell,  but  I  never  expected  to  see  so  much  in  print.  If 
you  have  not  read  that  story  get  it  and  read  it.  The 
French  say  that  the  barrage  put  down  by  the  Boches  that 
night  was  the  heaviest  in  any  raid  in  the  whole  war.  It 
succeeded  in  making  every  American  soldier  mad  clean 
through. 

You  needn't  worry  about  my  needing  any  fire  these  days 
for  we  have  had  more  fuel  lately,  and  have  been  able  to 
keep  comfortable.  The  really  bitter  weather  has  been 
over  for  some  time.  It  is  the  wet  that  will  bother  us  for  a 
time  now,  and  then  it  will  be  the  heat,  for  you  know  life's 
just  one  damn  thing  after  another. 

Love  to  all  the  folks,  and  particularly  Dad  and  yourself. 

QUINCY. 

The  removal  of  the  Second  Battalion  from  St.  Ciergues 
meant  the  reunion  of  the  entire  i68th  Regiment.  At 
Baccarat  in  the  Lorraine  sector,  it  was  reviewed  by 
General  Segonne.  Then  it  moved  on  to  Pexonne  where 
regimental  headquarters  were  established.  The  Second 
Battalion  headquarters  were  at  Badonviller,  a  town  of 
about  two  thousand  inhabitants,  55  kilometers  or  about 
33  miles  southeast  of  Nancy,  and  this  was  the  point  from 
which  the  regiment  went  into  the  trenches  about  a  mile 
distant  from  it.  Badonviller  was  the  ruined  town  de- 
scribed by  Mills  in  the  first  letter  in  this  chapter.  It 
remained  the  centre  of  activity  for  his  unit  during  the 
regiment's  service  in   Lorraine.     Baccarat  became  the 


Ravaged  Badonviller  341 

headquarters  of  the  Rainbow  Division.  It  is  a  compar- 
atively large  place  and  the  officers  of  the  i68th  when  on 
leave  frequently  visited  it.  It  is  about  fifteen  miles  from 
Badonviller. 

This  latter  place,  of  which  Mills  was  to  see  much  and  in 
which  he  had  so  many  experiences,  was  one  of  the  first 
towns  in  Lorraine  to  be  ravaged  by  the  Germans.  The 
souvenir  book  which  he  sent  home  later  contains  photo- 
engravings of  the  ruined  public  buildings  and  the  devas- 
tated streets.  Inhabitants  were  massacred,  including  the 
wife  of  M.  Benoit,  the  Maire,  on  August  12,  1914;  the 
wounded  were  butchered  and  civil  and  military  prisoners 
were  brutally  treated.  Everything  portable  that  the 
invaders  could  lay  their  hands  on,  they  stole  and  carried 
off.     Bavarian  troops  were  the  authors  of  these  outrages. 

When  despatched  to  the  front  at  this  point,  the  officers 
of  the  1 68th  were  told  that  they  were  to  have  only  a  ten- 
day  training  period.  Their  service  there  actually  lasted 
a  hundred  and  ten  days.  They  were  told  also  that  it  was  a 
very  quiet  front.  They  entered  the  trenches  for  the  first 
time  on  February  22,  and  were  grouped,  man  for  man, 
with  French  units  which  had  experience  in  the  game.  The 
method  used  in  occupying  the  trenches  was  to  place  one 
battalion  in  the  line,  one  in  reserve  and  one  in  support. 
The  one  in  line  was  at  Badonviller,  the  one  in  support  at 
Pexonne  and  Camp  Ker-Avor  and  the  one  in  reserve  at 
Neufmaisons.  They  were  changed  about  every  eight 
days.  For  more  than  a  week  the  sector  continued  quiet. 
The  lowans  held  the  line  and  went  out  raiding  in  No- 
Man's-Land  with  their  French  comrades;  gradually  they 
became  accustomed  to  the  situation  and  alert  in  response 
to  its  needs.  Then,  on  March  5,  came  a  terrible  bom- 
bardment by  the  German  guns  and  a  savage  raid,  no  doubt 
the  one  alluded  to  by  Mills  in  the  letters  already  given. 
The  Germans  gained  nothing  by  the  effort.     They  lost 


342  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

instead  of  taking  prisoners.  But  Captain  Harry  C. 
McHenry  of  Company  B  and  eighteen  men  were  killed. 
The  first  crosses  over  the  lowan  troops  went  up  in  a  little 
cemetery  near  Baccarat. 

This  is  not  a  history  of  the  i68th  Regiment,  a  glorious 
tale  in  itself,  and  told  at  length  by  Chaplain  Winfred  E. 
Robb  in  his  memorial  book,  The  Price  of  Our  Heritage; 
in  these  pages,  the  experiences  of  Mills  are  the  matter  in 
interest  and,  in  the  main,  they  are  best  recited  in  his  own 
picturesque  letters  in  which  he  unfolds  the  soldier's  life 
from  day  to  day.  The  next  of  these  was  evidently  written 
very  near  the  battle  line,  on  the  outskirts  of  Badonviller: 

March  17,  1918. 

Dear  Mother  :  I  am  ensconced  in  an  abandoned  gun 
pit — this  ground  has  been  fought  all  over  two  or  three 
times  already — on  the  sunny  side  of  a  hill  somewhere  in 
that  part  of  France  you  should  by  this  time  be  reasonably 
able  to  guess  at,  a  France  which  is  to-day  really  sunny.  It 
is  a  wonderful  day,  with  a  clear  blue  sky  out  of  which  a 
warm  sun  and  one  of  those  shadowy,  ghost-like  crescent 
moons  are  both  shining  at  the  same  time.  The  fields  are 
all  celebrating  St.  Patrick's  Day,  for  they  have  on  their 
brilliant  spring  dress.  And  if  this  weather  continues  it 
won't  be  long  before  the  trees  are  green,  too.  The  comer 
of  the  gun  pit  makes  an  excellent  armchair,  in  which  I 
have  made  a  cushion  with  my  raincoat.  I  am  leaning 
back  luxuriating  in  the  pleasant  warmth,  one  of  the  cigars 
you  sent  me  stuck  in  my  teeth,  my  writing  pad  on  my  knee, 
the  picture  of  solid  comfort.  Sol.  Rubel  says  he  does  not 
believe  anybody  else  can  be  as  contented  at  anything, 
any  way,  as  I  am  at  writing, 

I  have  drawn  a  peaceful,  idyllic  picture  of  my  present 
location  on  the  map  of  France.  To  complete  it:  I  am 
writing  to  the  music  of  beaucoup  de  canon,  to  phrase  it 


The  War  in  the  Air  343 

Frenchily.  Many  batteries  of  our  heavy  artillery  are 
located  in  the  woods  around  the  town  where  we  are  now  in 
reserv-e,  and  they  are  engaged  in  a  lazy  sort  of  duel  with 
the  Boche  artillery.  It  seems  highly  incongruous  for  the 
atmosphere  of  this  ideal  day  to  be  smashed  so  by  the  roar 
of  mighty  cannon.  Our  guns  tear  loose,  and  the  concussion 
they  make  jars  the  ground;  then  you  hear  away  off  to 
the  north  a  muffled  roar  and  in  a  minute  or  so  there  comes 
a  flock  of  Hun  "nailkegs"  shrieking  through  the  air  and 
bursts  with  another  jar  about  half  a  mile  or  so  away 
from  me. 

What  effect  our  fire  has  on  the  other  side  of  the  line  I 
cannot  say ;  but  the  Boche  fire  on  our  batteries  is  wholly  at 
random  and  futile.  Their  aviators  keep  coming  around 
overhead  trying  to  spot  our  batteries,  but  our  anti-aircraft 
guns  keep  them  at  such  a  great  height  their  reconnais- 
sance cannot  be  worth  much.  Even  now  a  flying  Dutch- 
man is  highballing  it  back  home  through  the  air  lanes 
with  little  white  spots,  like  fleecy  balls  of  cotton,  breaking 
out  all  around  him  where  our  shrapnel  is  bursting.  The 
shells  burst  so  close  to  the  planes  that  you  wonder  how 
they  escape,  yet  I  have  seen  only  one  airman  who,  I  was 
reasonably  sure,  was  shot  out  of  the  heavens.  This  one  is 
flying  so  high  that  his  machine  is  scarcely  discernible  by 
the  naked  eye  save  where  the  sunlight  shimmers  on  its 
wings  and  makes  them  gleam  like  those  of  a  dragon-fly. 
All  of  this  no  doubt  seems  highly  exciting  to  you,  but  is  so 
much  a  matter  of  course  to  us  that  nobody  stops  to  pay 
any  attention  either  to  the  artillery  fire  or  the  plane  shoot- 
ing unless  a  shell  happens  to  drop  unusually  close,  or  a  flyer 
takes  a  chance  and  comes  low.  As  to  the  aviation  end 
of  the  game,  the  French  don't  seem  to  care  how  much  the 
Boche  cruise  around  high  up  most  of  the  time,  but  when 
for  any  reason  we  don't  want  them  prying  into  our  busi- 
ness a  whole  flock  of  Allied  planes  appears  on  the  scene, 


344  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

and  you  don't  see  anything  of  the  Dutch  until  our  eagles 
depart.  I  guess  the  AlHed  supremacy  of  the  air  is  real; 
their  supremacy  in  artillery  is  beyond  question.  As  for 
the  Germans  ever  being  able  to  drive  very  deep  anywhere 
in  these  parts,  they  simply  could  not  do  it.  Nothing 
would  please  us  more  than  for  them  to  try. 

I  might  write  you  at  length  concerning  more  of  my 
experiences  up  front,  some  of  which  you  have  read  of 
already  in  my  letter  to  Mr.  Luby,  but  I  am  in  a  mood  for 
rereading  and  answering  the  three  batches  of  letters  I 
have  received  recently,  one  of  them  reaching  me  while  I 
was  up  on  the  line.  .  .  . 

Many  thanks  for  all  the  clippings;  I  enjoyed  them 
immensely.  It  was  too  bad  about  Lieutenant  Scott 
McCormick's  death  in  that  hand  grenade  accident.  He 
was  in  my  company  at  Plattsburg,  and  was  in  another 
company  of  the  1 68th  where  I  saw  a  good  deal  of  him.  He 
was  one  of  the  best  friends  I  had  in  the  regiment.  The 
cause  of  the  accident  will  never  be  known.  Grenades  are 
tricky  things. 

In  reference  to  the  coal  and  food  shortages  concerning 
which  you  have  written  me  and  sent  clippings  I  incline  to 
the  belief  that  Kultur  will  be  found  back  of  most  of  them, 
if  the  investigations  only  go  deep  enough.  The  long  reach 
of  German  intrigue  is  a  more  marvelous  thing  to  me  than 
the  power  of  German  arms. 

Your  Hylan  clippings  have  kept  me  right  up  with  the 
New  York  City  situation.  Curiously  enough  I  had,  from 
this  distance,  come  to  the  conclusion  that  Hylan  was 
trying  to  ape  Gaynor,  and  had  so  expressed  myself  in  a 
letter  to  Al  Pierce  [The  Evening  Sun's  City  Hall  reporter], 
before  receiving  your  clippings  charging  the  new  Mayor 
with  such  emulation. 

Well,  it's  nearly  supper  time  so  I  had  better  stop.  The 
artillery  party  is  still  going  on,  but  Fritz  didn't  raise  his 


Incidental  Tragedy  345 

sights  any  so  I  didn't  have  to  duck  out  of  my  armchair. 
There  is  a  French  plane  cruising  overhead  now  and  no 
Boche  in  sight. 

Much  love  to  Dad  and  yourself.  Quincy. 

Lieutenant  Scott  McCormick,  who  was  in  Company  K 
of  the  1 68th,  died  on  January  17,  191 8,  as  the  result  of  the 
accidental  explosion  of  a  hand  grenade.  The  sad  mishap 
occurred  at  the  officers'  training  school  at  Gondrecourt,  to 
which  he  had  been  sent.  Lieutenant  Rubel  of  Mills's 
company  was  also  at  the  school  and  was  the  first  to  reach 
McCormick's  side.  It  was  he  who  wrote  to  McCormick's 
mother,  Mrs.  Oscar  Gareissen  of  New  York,  giving  her  the 
details  of  the  tragedy.  She  was  engaged  in  reading  a  letter 
from  her  son  when  the  official  notification  of  his  death  was 
delivered  to  her.  Lieutenant  Rubel's  letter  led  to  an 
acquaintance  between  Mrs.  Gareissen  and  his  mother. 
Rubel  was  killed  almost  at  the  same  moment  as  Mills 
and  their  common  grief  became  a  bond  of  sympathy  and 
regard  among  the  three  bereft  mothers.  Mrs.  Gareissen 
went  to  France  soon  after  her  son's  death  to  work  for  the 
soldiers.  The  kindly  efforts  which  she  made  later  in  Mrs. 
Mills's  behalf  will  be  told  in  due  course. 

March  19,  191 8. 

Dear  Dad:  The  U.  S.  N.  A.  collar  insignia  and  one  of 
the  boxes  of  cigars  came  to-day,  and  both  were  most 
welcome.  I  am  acknowledging  their  receipt  at  once  be- 
cause I  am  not  sure  that  I  will  have  any  opportunity  to 
mail  letters  for  the  next  ten  days.  This  is  the  last  day  for 
mailing  letters  before  we  start  out  on  a  hike  of  a  hundred 
miles  or  so  back  to  our  training  area  where  we  will  then  be 
for  some  time.  We  came  up  by  train,  but  we  will  march 
back,  largely  because  the  railroads  are  needed  for  present 
military  purposes,  I  think.     I  do  not  apprehend  the  walk 


346  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

at  all,  for  you  know  I  am  pretty  good  at  that,  and  besides 
I'd  just  as  soon  be  doing  that  as  anything  else.  It  is  all 
work,  and  the  walk  will  do  as  much  as  anything  I  can 
think  of  to  harden  us  for  future  service.  If  the  weather 
only  continues  as  at  present,  cool  but  not  too  cold,  with 
the  roads  splendid  underfoot,  we  should  not  complain. 

By  the  way,  I  don't  believe  I  have  taken  occasion  to 
comment  on  the  wonderful  roads  of  France.  They  are 
graded  to  perfection,  and  are  built  somehow  so  as  to  with- 
stand the  suction  of  automobile  tires  much  better  than  our 
roads  back  home.  They  seem  to  be  a  sort  of  macadam, 
but  there  is  a  fine,  close-packing  white  earth  of  some  sort 
mixed  in  with  the  crushed  rock.  The  way  these  roads 
stand  up  under  the  terrific  military  auto-train  traffic  is 
a  marvel ;  I  hate  to  think  what  such  use  would  make  of 
our  American  good  roads.  The  amount  of  repair  work  you 
see  going  on  is  very  slight.  These  French  people  have  a 
great  way  of  setting  out  a  single  row  of  trees  on  either 
side  of  each  road,  which  not  only  adds  to  the  beauty  of  the 
landscape  but  renders  travel  along  the  highways,  as  they 
run  largely  through  endless  fields,  much  easier  at  night. 
You  can  keep  to  the  road  by  v/atching  the  trees  against 
the  sky,  even  on  the  darkest  nights. 

I  am  enclosing  some  cards  which  will  give  you  an  idea 
of  the  sort  of  country  we  are  now  located  in,  a  part  of  the 
section  crushed  by  the  iron  heel  of  f rightfulness.  The 
more  I  see  what  the  Germans  have  done  over  here,  the 
more  I  long  to  kill  some  of  them. 

At  the  house  where  we  officers  are  messing  now  there 
is  a  baby  that  was  left  with  the  daughter  of  the  family  by 
the  Boches  as  a  souvenir  of  their  invasion.  The  father 
and  brother  of  the  family  are  in  the  army.  Battered  walls 
are  the  rule  everywhere,  but  the  fields  between  are  kept 
green. 

To-night,  as  most  of  to-day  has  been,  is  as  calm  and 


Brief  Respite  347 

peaceful  as  if  there  were  no  war  anywhere  on  the  face  of 
the  earth,  but  at  any  minute  the  scores  of  big  guns  in  the 
immediate  vicinity  may  let  loose  with  a  roar  almost  strong 
enough  to  lift  me  right  out  of  my  chair.  We  are  within 
possible  but  not  probable  artillery  range.  We  will  move 
back  to  where  we  will  not  hear  the  sound  of  firing  for  a 
long  time,  so  don't  be  apprehensive  if  there  are  no  letters 
from  me  for  a  couple  of  weeks.  While  you  are  not  hearing 
from  me  I  will  not  be  getting  any  mail,  either. 

I  am  sending  you  also  a  little  French  calendar  book, 
similar  to  the  one  which  you  sent  me,  and  which  I  was 
mighty  glad  to  carry  in  my  pocketbook.  Much  love  to 
Mother  and  yourself,  and  regards  to  our  friends. 

QUINCY. 

The  regiment  was  relieved  on  March  22  and  marched 
to  the  rear.  Part  of  it  went  to  Jeansmesnil;  Quincy's 
battaHon  was  sent  to  the  rest  camp  of  Ker-Avor,  about 
five  kilometres  from  Neuf  maisons  and  three  from  Pexonne ; 
about  five  from  Badonviller.  The  rest  from  battle 
proved  to  be  brief.  Mills,  however,  took  advantage  of  it 
to  send  home  several  letters : 

March  26,  191 8. 

Dear  Mother  :  The  clipping  you  sent  me  regarding  a 
prospective  raise  in  officers'  pay  is  interesting,  but  it  strikes 
me  that  there  are  more  important  things  to  be  done  first. 
Personally,  I  do  not  feel  there  is  so  much  need  for  raising 
officers'  salaries;  I  would  prefer  for  the  Government  to  see 
to  it  that  we  are  not  stung  in  purchasing  uniforms  and 
other  equipment.  As  compared  with  officers  in  other 
armies,  we  are  already  munificently  paid ;  it  is  a  fact  that 
unless  the  British  officer  has  independent  means  he  cannot 
afford  to  associate  with  American  officers,  simply  because 
he  hasn't  the  money.     On  the  other  hand,  it  is  true  that 


348  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

those  who  stay  at  home  should  be  willing  to  pay  almost 
any  price  to  those  who  actually  go  out  and  bear  the  brunt 
of  the  war,  enlisted  men  and  officers  alike. 

All  things  considered,  however,  I  don't  believe  that  the 
highly  paid  soldier  is  necessarily  the  best  soldier;  in  fact, 
the  very  opposite  may  easily  be  the  case.  I  believe  that 
the  officers  and  private  soldiers  of  the  United  States  are 
paid  too  much  already.  The  surplus  which  both  spend 
over  what  is  required  for  necessities — and  the  Government 
could  supply  everything  required  at  a  slight  additional 
expenditure — is  absolutely  wasted.  And  this  is  no  time 
for  waste.  I  really  think  that  while  I  do  enjoy  spending 
the  surplus  that  I  have  I  would  be  a  better  soldier  for  not 
having  it  to  spend.  The  idea  of  high  pay  for  soldiers  is 
a  direct  outgrowth  of  the  American  misconception  of 
freedom  for  self-indulgence  instead  of  self -sacrifice. 

Pershing's  condemnation  of  the  hypocrites  back  home 
for  wailing  about  the  moral  state  of  the  American  soldier 
is  great  stuff.  I  think  that  I  have  dwelt  sufficiently  in  a 
previous  letter  on  the  remarkable  cleanness  of  this  army. 
1 1  is  so  rarely  that  a  soldier  abuses  the  privilege  of  drinking 
light  wine  and  beer,  which  is  accorded  him,  as  to  be 
exceptional.  And  if  the  men  could  buy  plenty  of  candy 
at  United  States  prices  I  believe  that  their  purchase  of  beer 
and  wine  would  be  cut  down  fully  fifty  per  cent.  If  those 
"holier  than  thou"  criticasters  would  get  together  and  do 
something  by  organizing  candy  canteens  for  every  place 
where  American  troops  are  quartered  over  here,  they 
would  be  performing  a  real  service  for  the  United  States 
and  its  soldiers.  I  hope  that  you  can  have  this  excerpt 
about  the  ' ' candy  canteen ' '  idea  put  into  print.  Such  an 
innovation  would  fill  a  need  as  great  as  any  tobacco  fund 
is  now  filling. 

But  I  suppose  you  are  wanting  to  hear  more  about  my 
experiences  up  front.     Well,  while  speaking  of  bombard- 


An  American  "Show"  349 

ments  I  don't  believe  I  told  you  what  a  beautiful  sight 
a  night  bombardment  is.  We  ' '  put  on  a  show ' '  one  morn- 
ing at  4 :3o  when  the  Hght  was  just  beginning  to  appear  in 
the  east.  I  stood  in  the  doorway  of  battalion  head- 
quarters and  watched  the  flash  of  our  great  guns  back  on 
the  horizon.  It  was  like  the  continuous  flash  of  distant 
lightning  playing  in  a  gigantic  half-circle  behind  our  line. 
The  flare  from  each  cannon  would  light  the  sky  half  way 
to  the  zenith.  And  there  was  plenty  of  thunder  to 
accompany  the  display  of  light,  too,  I  assure  you. 

The  men's  letters  have  been  interesting  since  their 
experience  in  the  trenches.  "BeHeve  me,"  wrote  one, 
"those  posts  supporting  the  barbed  wire  all  wore  German 
helmets  and  did  squads  east  and  squads  west  all  night 
long  every  night.  You  needn't  tell  me  those  posts  don't 
move,  for  I've  seen  'em."  "I  shot  six  Germans  sneaking 
up  on  me  one  night,"  confessed  another,  "and  when  day- 
light came  they  were  all  the  same  stump. "  "  Those  damn 
posts  play  leap-frog  all  night  long,"  declared  another. 
"When  we  got  tired,"  asserted  one,  "we  used  to  ride  the 
rats  around."  One  wag  asserted  that  "rats  would  halt 
you  and  refuse  to  let  you  pass  after  dark  unless  you  gave 
the  countersign."  The  men  were  equally  jocular  under 
fire.  When  a  shell  let  go  uncomfortably  close  I  have 
heard  one  sing  out  to  another :  ' '  Well,  what  do  you  think 
of  the  war  now.  Bill?"  It  was  nothing  unusual  to  hear 
a  group  sing  out  in  unison  in  answer  to  a  close  shell-burst  a 
long-drawTi-out  derisive  "Well!  Well!" 

This  is  in  accord  with  the  spirit  of  the  poilus,  one  of 
whom  when  a  good  unhealthy  sized  piece  of  shrapnel 
landed  with  a  wicked  spat  at  his  feet  removed  his  helmet 
with  a  flourish,  bowed  effusively,  ejaculated,  "Merci, 
beaucoup,"  replaced  his  helmet  and  went  on  about  his 
business.  While  the  big  show  was  going  on  our  men  got 
so  eager  to  * '  see  Fritz  get  shot  all  to  hell ' '  that  they  risked 


350  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

the  German  fire  to  crawl  up  on  the  parapets  where  they 
could  get  a  good  view.  One  of  them  could  not  restrain 
himself  when  he  saw  a  Fritz  go  sailing  up  into  the  air  along 
with  logs,  trees  (roots  and  all)  and  gun  wheels ;  he  just  got 
right  up  and  danced  on  the  parapet  yelling :  * '  Look  at  that 
damn  Dutchman!  he  thinks  he  is  flying  but  he  ain't." 
This  enthusiast  had  to  be  yanked  down  to  safety  by  his 
coat-tails. 

Right  in  the  middle  of  that  big  bombardment  who  do 
you  suppose  walked  into  the  battalion  headquarters  but 
three  American  war  correspondents :  Lincoln  Eyre  of  the 
New  York  World,  with  whom  I  covered  City  Hall  for 
several  years;  C.  C.  Lyon  of  the  United  Press,  with  whom 
I  covered  the  National  Conventions  in  191 2  and  Herbert 
Corey,  free  lance.  They  had  their  first  experience  under 
fire  with  us.  I  got  so  busy  talking  old  times  with  Eyre 
and  Lyon  that  I  forgot  about  being  ' '  skeered ' '  part  of  the 
time.  The  bombardment  lasted  six  hours,  as  I  told  you 
before,  I  believe.  These  three  newspaper  men  make  their 
headquarters  in  Paris,  and  they  assure  me  that  when  I 
get  down  there  on  furlough  I  won't  miss  anything.  And  I 
guess  I  will  go  to  Paris  when  I  get  my  furlough,  as  the 
Major  tells  me  it  can  be  arranged. 

Perhaps  you  will  see  something  written  by  one  or  each 
of  these  men  about  the  little  affair  they  witnessed  with  us. 
Look  out  for  something  of  the  sort.  I  am  afraid  that 
whatever  they  write  they  will  not  give  due  credit  to  the 
real  heroes  of  the  day,  the  cooks  of  G  Company,  who 
"stood  to"  around  the  rolling  kitchen  during  the  firing 
and  had  hot  "slum"  and  boiling  coffee  ready  when  the 
guns  began  to  slow  up.  Before  the  shooting  stopped 
they  were  helping  the  carriers  get  the  hot  food  out  to  the 
boys  in  the  trenches,  and  they  had  to  drop  flat  in  the  mud 
to  dodge  shells  more  than  once.  Buckets  built  on  the 
thermos-bottle  idea  are  provided  for  the  transportation  of 


Reporters  Under  Fire  35i 

the  food  a  mile  or  so  to  the  trenches,  and  the  men  of  our 
company  always  got  theirs  piping  hot.  Our  small  dog 
really  suffered  more  than  any  other  member  of  our  com- 
pany in  the  trip  to  the  line.  He  nearly  barked  himself  to 
death  at  the  German  shells  that  burst  close,  and  is  no 
longer  a  butterball,  is  quite  thin  in  fact,  and  badly  in  need 
of  his  rest  billet. 

I  am  glad  you  like  the  medal  I  sent  you.  Here's  where 
I  close  this,  as  I  have  an  unexpected  opportunity  to  mail 
it.  I  hope  you  are  having  as  glorious  a  Palm  Sunday  as 
this  one  which  is  blessing  France  and  us. 

Captain  Springer  sends  regards.  Love  to  Dad  and 
yourself,  and  regards  to  the  friends.  Quincy. 

Mr.  Corey  wrote  an  article  of  3500  to  4000  words  which 
appeared  in  the  New  York  Globe  of  April  16  describing 
this  visit  to  Badonviller.  He  dated  it,  "With  the  Ameri- 
can Army  in  the  Lorraine  Sector,  March  10."  This, 
then,  was  the  time  of  his  call  at  the  headquarters  of  the 
1 68th,  although  Mills  tells  of  it  more  than  two  weeks  later. 
Mr.  Corey's  account  of  the  men,  their  temper,  their  cour- 
age, their  light-hearted  demeanor  as  well  as  of  their  peril 
and  suffering  corresponds  closely  with  Mills's  statements 
in  various  letters.     In  the  article,  this  paragraph  occurred : 

Inside  the  pink  house,  the  officer  in  command  received  us 
with  a  grin.  The  hirniorous  feature  of  the  situation  lay  in  the 
fact  that  we  had  come  up  the  railroad,  every  inch  of  the  line 
being  under  close  observation  by  the  Boche.  His  aid  said 
we  had  come  right  through  the  middle  of  it.  His  aid,  by  the 
way,  used  to  do  City  Hall  in  New  York  for  an  evening  paper 
and  sent  his  best  wishes  to  Bill  Gramer  of  the  New  York  Globe. 
He  said  that  Bill  was  a  good  old  scout.  Bill's  merits  did  not 
appeal  to  us  as  worthy  of  discussion  at  the  moment. 

"They're  not  wasting  shell  on  a  few  men  on  the  railroad," 
said  the  officer  in  command,  "they  need  all  those  shells  to 
lam  our  batteries  with!" 


352  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

This  brought  a  letter  from  Mr.  Gramer  to  Mills  in  which 
he  said : 

I  recognize  the  leading  actor  in  the  unnamed  dramatis  per- 
sonse.  It  made  me  feel  glad  to  hear  from  you  although  indi- 
rectly, and  inspired  me  with  even  more  confidence  than  I  had 
in  our  sterling  defenders  who,  face  to  face  with  death,  can 
maintain  a  sense  of  humor  and  pause  to  make  inquiry  about 
a  friend. 

Gradually  the  public  is  beginning  to  grasp  the  gravity  of  the 
situation,  and  you  men  in  the  trenches  may  rest  assured  that 
you  are  receiving  full  support  from  over  here. 

Mills's  letters  went  on : 

March  27,  1918. 

Dear  Mother:  I  am  sending,  or  am  going  to  send  as 
soon  as  I  have  the  opportunity,  a  very  small  package  your 
way.  Its  principal  content  will  be  a  pin  in  the  shape  of 
the  Cross  of  Lorraine  which  I  think  you  will  like.  The 
two  Joan  of  Arc  badges  I  also  inclose  are  of  no  intrinsic 
value,  but  I  send  them  as  souvenirs  of  the  town  up  on  the 
first  line  where  we  were  stationed.  I  found  them  in  one  of 
the  abandoned  houses  there  along  with  a  bunch  of  stamps 
like  that  at  the  top  of  the  next  card,  all  bearing  the  busc 
of  The  Maid. 

You  can't  go  anywhere  in  this  part  of  France  without 
finding  all  sorts  of  similar  mementoes  of  the  immortal  Joan. 
These  two  cards  will  afford  you  some  further  idea  of  the 
appearanceof  the  ruined  towns  I've  been  through  recently. 

We  have  been  hiking  over  more  beautiful  country  in 
what  is  now  really  the  pleasant  land  of  France.  The 
Germans  seem  to  be  showing  more  activity,  and  we  all 
hope  it  means  their  drive,  Quincy. 

The  Cross  of  Lorraine  pin  which  Mills  sent  to  his  mother 
is  of  gold.     The  beautiful  design  shows  a  double  cross  with 


Not  to  Be  Awed  353 

a  thistle  across  it.  The  thistle  represents  the  union  of  the 
families  of  Guise  and  Stuart  by  the  marriage  of  Mary  of 
Guise  to  James  V  of  Scotland. 

March  31,  1918. 

Dear  Mother:  Although  we  are  out  of  cannon  sound 
now,  the  favorite  song  among  the  men  is,  "Gee!  but  ain't 
America  a  grand  old  place ! ' '  There  is  nothing  incongruous 
about  this  as  there  was  in  the  sound  of  the  voices  of  our 
company  quartette  rising  in  one  of  their  favorite  airs, 
"See  that  big  moon  shining  up  above — There's  no  time 
like  this  for  making  love,"  one  night  while  the  guns  were 
banging  away  around  the  shell-battered  town  [Badon- 
villerj  in  which  we  remained  in  support  after  a  period  in 
the  trenches.  The  music  of  our  quartette  sounded  as 
strange  in  that  environment  as  had  the  voices  of  the  birds 
in  the  orchard  around  battalion  headquarters  during  the 
big  bombardment  I  wrote  you  of.  It  seemed  to  me  that 
the  concussion  from  the  artillery  would  have  been  enough 
to  awe  the  birds  into  silence,  but  they  ignored  it  utterly; 
and  the  only  way  artillery  can  effect  the  spirits  of  the 
American  soldier  is  by  a  direct  hit. 

However,  the  music  that  the  shells  contribute  makes  a 
lasting  impression  and  it  doesn't  take  you  very  long  to  tell 
the  different  keys  in  which  the  various  sizes  sing.  For 
instance,  the  Boche  77  comes  over  with  a  whizz  and  a 
bang  that  has  earned  for  projectiles  of  that  caHbre  the 
name  of  "whizz-bangs."  The  105's  and  155's,  especially 
the  shrapnel  variety,  emit  a  long  drawn  out  squealing 
whine  that  trails  off  interminally  before  the  explosion,  this 
peculiar  noise  having  earned  them  the  name  of  "flying 
pigs"  from  the  American  soldier,  this  appellation  being 
original  to  the  A.  E.  F.  so  far  as  I  know.  But  the  really 
appalling  sound  is  when  a  210  or  a  250  invades  the  atmos- 
phere in  your  immediate  vicinity ;  it  sounds  like  a  whole 


354  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

frame  house  coming  rushing  through  the  air — a  good  big 
frame  house  too — and  when  that  shell  lets  go,  the  hole  it 
makes  is  big  enough  to  dump  a  small  building  into. 

It  is  some  relief  not  to  have  those  noises  pounding  at 
your  nerves  all  the  time  and  to  be  listening  for  the  next 
one  to  drop  when  there's  nothing  happening.  If  it  were 
not  for  the  comic  relief  you  get  up  front  you  would  go 
nutty,  and  when  the  decorations  are  passed  around  one 
ought  to  be  handed  out  to  the  well  known  and  much 
maligned  army  mule  for — in  addition  to  keeping  both  our 
stomachs  and  guns  supplied  with  food — affording  no  end 
of  this  low  comedy  stuff.  One  morning  when  intense 
silence  was  desired  within  our  lines,  there  arose  in  the 
street  a  clatter  that  sounded  like  a  whole  herd  of  mules 
stampeding,  and  after  it  died  down  some  ten  minutes  later 
a  driver  lifted  up  his  voice  in  an  aggrieved  complaint: 
' '  Now  ye  goddam  fool  mule  ye  didn't  git  hurt  after  all,  did 
ye?"  The  said  "goddam"  mule  had  raised  all  the  rum- 
pus about  crossing  a  drain  not  more  than  two  inches  deep. 

One  morning  I  got  another  good  laugh  when  old  Bill 
Hobbs,  one  of  our  veteran  kitchen  mechanics,  standing 
arms  akimbo,  his  big  spoon  in  one  hand,  propounded 
to  our  chief  muleteer,  the  inquiry:  "Well,  Ben,  where's 
them  soldiers  goin'  to  drink  this  mawnin'?"  The  while, 
"them  soldiers" — our  ration  wagon  team — regarded  him, 
one  over  each  of  Ben's  shoulders,  with  that  gaze  of  infinite 
wisdom  common  to  mules.  Bill  having  used  their  trough 
as  a  wash  basin  for  his  greasy  pans,  "them  soldiers"  had 
to  be  led  elsewhere  to  drink  that  "mawnin',"  Uncon- 
sciously though,  Bill  had  done ' '  them  soldiers ' '  the  greatest 
honor  in  his  power  by  accepting  them  on  an  exactly  even 
footing  with  himself  in  the  conflict  against  Kultur.  If  the 
other  soldiers  do  their  "bits"  as  well  as  the  mules  they 
will  have  done  something  to  brag  about  when  the}''  get 
through. 


Long  Range  Failure  355 

One  souvenir  of  the  trenches  I  have  thus  far  escaped,  the 
"cooties,"  whom  the  men  refer  to  rather  proudly  in  their 
letters  home  as  their  "little  pets."  In  fact,  there  has  been 
less  trouble  with  vermin  than  I  had  apprehended.  But 
just  to  be  on  the  safe  side  I  wear  a  cute  little  "cootie 
necklace"  with  lavalHeres  (spelled  right?)  fore  and  aft, 
which  are  well  soaked  with  a  very  penetrating  aromatic 
cedar  oil  that  smells  much  like  the  sort  of  stuff  we  use  to 
charm  the  mosquitos  away,  back  home.  I  certainly  hope 
I  don't  get  bugs  in  that  fine  sleeping  bag  Bill  Gramer  do- 
nated to  me ;  it  would  be  too  bad  to  have  to  burn  it. 

The  news  of  the  long  range  guns  with  which  the  Ger- 
mans have  been  shelling  Paris  has  produced  a  very  differ- 
ent effect,  so  far  as  the  A.  E.  F.  is  concerned,  from  that  of 
extreme  awe,  which  Kultur  evidently  hoped  for.  ' '  Them 
guns  shoot  too  far;  they  can't  hit  us,"  was  the  first  com- 
ment I  heard  from  the  men,  who  now  swear  that  they  saw 
the  shells  going  overhead,  and  that  each  one  carried  a  Ger- 
man band  playing  full  blast.  This  latest  Boche  stunt 
is  entirely  in  keeping  with  their  grandstand  playing 
throughout,  but  nobody  seems  to  consider  it  of  any 
military  significance.  From  all  that  I  can  learn  the  cost 
of  such  a  bombardment  must  about  equal  the  damiage 
wrought  by  it.  It  is  a  matter  of  considerably  more  con- 
cern that  the  Germans  have  been  dropping  Russian  shells 
over  on  the  Western  front,  indicating  that  they  are  putting 
the  captured  Russian  artillery  into  use.  But  that  the 
addition  of  these  guns  will  make  any  serious  difference  is 
not  likely. 

In  one  respect,  particularly,  the  trip  to  the  trenches  has 
been  extremely  beneficial  to  the  men.  Before  they  went 
up  they  were  inclined  to  be  entirely  too  cocky,  and  to  hold 
the  French  in  considerable  contempt  because  they  hadn't 
"licked  the  Dutch"  already.  They  still  refer  to  the 
poilus  as  "froggies,"  but  it  is  noticeable  that  having 


356  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

soldiered  with  them  they  view  them  with  a  large  amount 
of  respect.  The  poilus  think  the  Americans  incline  to 
rashness  in  always  picking  on  the  Boche  and  keeping  him 
stirred  up  continually,  but  that  is  a  good  trait,  provided 
our  men  don't  undertake  to  walk  right  on  over  the  German 
trenches  into  Berlin — and  I  do  not  now  believe  that  they 
will  make  this  mistake  as  the  Canadians  and  Australians 
did.  There  isn't  any  doubt  about  whom  "No-Man's- 
Land"  belongs  to  along  the  American  sectors,  however. 
The  Germans  simply  got  out  of  the  contested  ground  on 
our  front  and  stayed  out  of  it  at  night  while  American 
patrols  roamed  all  over  it.  Isolated  snipers  were  about 
the  only  things  to  worry  us,  that  and  the  dropping  of 
occasional  shells.  As  I  have  written  you  before,  there  is 
hardly  ever  a  batch  of  the  men's  letters  to  be  censored 
without  a  smile  in  at  least  one  of  them.  Nearly  all  of 
them  insist  on  spelling  Boche  "Bosche"  or  sometimes  just 
plain  "Bosh" — and  I  must  admit  that  there  is  a  certain 
fitness  in  the  characterization. 

This  reminds  me  to  remark  to  you  on  an  American 
eccentricity,  indulgence — call  it  what  you  like — which 
has  made  a  great  impression  here  in  France,  causing  one 
very  nice  little  madamoiselle  at  whose  home  we  had  our 
officers'  mess  at  one  of  our  stops  to  inquire:  "Quel  est  le 
goddam?  Le  soldat  d'Amerique  dit  tou jours,  goddam." 
She  was  considerably  mystified  and  somewhat  embar- 
rassed by  the  shout  of  laughter  which  greeted  the  trans- 
lation of  her  query.  As  for  communicating  with  the 
French,  I  go  armed  with  my  trusty  pocket  dictionary 
always,  but  don't  often  have  to  resort  to  it  in  the  essential 
intercourse  with  the  natives  regarding  food,  drink  and 
lodging.  I  can  usually  manage  to  make  myself  under- 
stood if  I  ask  a  question,  but  I  have  a  devil  of  a  time  some- 
times comprehending  the  answer,  which  always  sounds  so 
very  different  from  the  way  it  looks  when  written  out. 


Back  to  the  Front  Line  357 

Here  are  some  Easter  violets.  Some  of  these  days  I  will 
tell  you  a  very  interesting  story  concerning  the  picking  of 
them,  but  for  the  present  I  will  have  to  censor  that  out  of 
my  correspondence  myself. 

It  has  been  a  wonderful  Easter  Sunday,  as  calm  and 
peaceful  as  if  there  were  no  war  anywhere  in  the  world. 
However,  I  risk  this  gentle  Easter  wish:  "Goddam  the 
Germans — tou  jours  Goddam ! " 

Love  to  Dad  and  yourself  and  regards  to  all  the  friends. 

QUINCY. 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  first  intention  in  with- 
drawing the  regiment  to  the  rear,  the  respite  lasted  actu- 
ally only  ten  days.  The  German  drive  against  the  British 
at  Amiens  made  it  necessary  to  collect  a  large  force  of 
veteran  French  troops  from  the  trenches  to  send  to  their 
relief.  In  turn,  American  troops,  including  the  i68th, 
were  ordered  to  take  their  place.  The  regiment  marched 
back  to  Badonviller  and  occupied  the  right  of  the 
divisional  front.  It  remained  there,  in  one  or  other  of 
the  three  defensive  positions,  until  June  i8,  making, 
altogether,  a  hundred  and  ten  days  of  service  on  the 
Lorraine  front.  From  one  of  the  support  stations  here- 
abouts Mills  wrote  his  next  letters : 

April  6,  191 8. 

Dear  Mother  :  Glad  to  get  a  bunch  of  mail  from  you 
to-day,  and  learn  that  you  folks  at  home  are  well  and 
happy.  You  must  bear  with  me  if  news  is  fragmentary 
and  somewhat  far  between,  for  I  am  so  eternally  busy  that 
I  haven't  either  time,  or  energy  for  writing  when  I  get 
the  time.  I  just  naturally  hit  the  blankets  and  snore, 
snore,  snore. 

We  are  not  actually  in  the  biggest  of  the  big  doings  this 
spring,  but  we  are  playing  a  most  important  part  and 


358  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

playing  it  extremely  well,  for  as  the  Iowa  men  all  say 
proudly,  "we  shore  have  the  Dutch  bothered,"  which  is, 
I  think,  absolutely  true.  The  Boches  have  not  attempted 
to  patrol  the  front  of  our  positions  at  all  so  far  as  we  can 
ascertain,  and  we  know  the  holy  terror  in  which  they  stand 
of  the  American  artillery. 

Some  of  these  days  I  will  have  some  very  interesting 
things  to  write  you,  but  for  the  present  my  communication 
will  have  to  be  brief  and  to  the  point :  That  I  am  well,  and 
as  happy  as  a  man  can  be  when  he  hasn't  time  to  think 
whether  he  is  or  not. 

Much  love  for  Dad  and  yourself,  and  regards  to  all  the 
friends.  Quincy. 

April  9,  1918. 

Dear  Mother  :  This  is  just  a  brief  line  to  let  you  know 
that  I  am  O.K.,  and  that  a  letter  telling  more  in  detail  of 
my  recent  experience  will  follow  this  as  soon  as  I  can  get 
to  it.  My  last  note  to  you  was  written  in  a  dugout  some 
several  feet  underground  up  on  the  front  line  in  Lorraine. 
I  had  a  platoon  in  combat  position  this  time ;  and  so  you 
can  imagine  that  I  have  had  too  much  on  my  mind  to 
leave  much  time  for  letters  recently. 

I  have  pretty  much  lost  track  of  time  in  the  immediate 
past  and  of  the  events  occurring  therein — the  normal  ones, 
I  mean — so  I  am  not  sure  that  I  got  notes  off  to  you 
regularly.  But  I  wrote  you  as  often  as  I  could.  And 
since  coming  out  I  have  been  specializing  in  sleep  when- 
ever I  have  not  been  attending  to  company  matters. 
Somehow  or  other,  there  has  been  another  jam  in  the 
delivery  of  incoming  mail  and  I  am  .  .  . 

Right  here,  at  this  point  in  the  sentence,  in  walked  an 
orderly  and  presented  me  with  a  fistful  of  mail,  but  there 
were  only  four  letters  from  you,  and  that  leaves  me  still 
shy  fully  half  of  what  you  must  have  mailed  me  during 


Trench  Reports  359 

February.  The  third  box  of  cigars  you  mailed  me  and 
Bill  Cramer's  package  have  not  showed  up  yet,  and  they 
would  hit  just  about  right,  too.  Also  the  candy  will  touch 
the  same  spot  when  it  arrives,  which  will  be  some  time. 

Well,  here's  where  I  put  in  a  few  more  hours  on  that 
sleeping  contract. 

Much  love  to  Dad  and  yourself.  Quincy. 

Further  souvenirs  of  this  first  experience  in  the  trenches 
were  found  in  Mills's  trunks  when  they  were  delivered  to 
his  parents.  Between  the  pages  of  his  notebook  used 
later  at  the  Gondrecourt  training  school  for  officers,  were 
sixteen  rough  slips  of  paper  torn,  some  from  a  pad,  some 
from  a  memorandum  book,  and  containing  in  pencil 
writing  the  copies  he  had  kept  of  reports,  requisitions 
and  communications  which  he  had  sent  to  his  company 
commander  and  other  officers,  and  one  or  two  repHes 
received  from  them.  Nothing  better  illustrates  the 
matter-of-fact,  or  routine  side  of  life  in  the  trenches  than 
these.     They  are  all  numbered.     This  is  the  first : 

From  Lt.  Mills  at  G.  C.  12,  4/3/18—4:15  p.m.  By  Pvt.  Skinner. 

Lt.  Younkin  :     Relief  completed  as  per  instructions.     We 

drew  5  shrapnel  in  Boyou  Central  half  way  out;  and  about  15 

in  the  communicating  trench  between  G.  C  11  and  G.  C.  12, 

one  being  a  direct  hit  in  the  trench  behind  us.     I  believe  that 

as  long  as  the  German  sausage  balloon  is  kept  up  over  to  our 

left  it  can  keep  track  of  chow  details  and  all  other  parties 

passing  into  this  sector  by  day.     There  are  three  points  at 

which  the  trench  between  11  and  12  demands  immediate  work 

(at  one  place  it  is  necessary  to  climb  almost  on  the  parapet  to 

pass)  and  it  would  take  15  men  three  nights  to  put  this  G.  C.  in 

proper  shape.     Please  get  this  work  done  for  me. 

Mills. 

To  this,  Lt.  Younkin,  who  had  succeeded  Capt.  Steller 
in  command  of  Co.  C  after  the  latter  had  been  wounded 


36o  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

in  the  head  in  an  extraordinary  manner  and  partially 
blinded,  replied : 

Lt.  Mills:  I  will  have  the  "Boche  sausage"  removed 
to-morrow. 

Will  try  to  get  you  a  working  party  for  to-morrow  night ;  in 
meantime,  do  what  work  you  can  on  trenches  and  parapet. 
The  men  relieved  are  in  no  condition  to  work  to-night. 

YOUNKIN. 

Mills  answered : 

At  G.  C.  12 — 4/4/18  By  Pvt.  Lindquist 

To  Lt.  Younkin:  Thanks  for  having  the  sausage  taken 
down  this  a.m.  I  hereby  requisition  at  Lt.  Nelson's  direction, 
50  duckboards  for  use  in  the  G.C.  and  the  entrance  to  the 
C.T.  now  being  repaired,  C.T.  311,  I  think  it  is. 

The  working  detail  I  asked  for  yesterday  should  be  from  one 
of  the  reserve  companies  in  town — from  the  engineers,  if  pos- 
sible. Lindquist  on  his  early  trip  to-day  noticed  a  steady  light 
evidently  shining  from  the  door  of  a  dugout  in  G.C.  13,  which 
should  be  covered.  Mills. 

In  order,  the  other  communications  were : 

At  G.  C.  12,  4/3/18 — 5  P.M.  By  Pvt.  Skinner. 

Ordnance  Officer,  2nd  Btn.: — Give  this  detail  1500 
rounds  of  automatic  rifle  ammunition  for  Lt.  Mills  at  G.C.  12. 

Q.  S.  Mills, 
2nd  Lt.  G  Co.  1 68th  Inf. 

G.  C.  12,  4/3/18 — 5  P.M.  By  Pvt.  Skinner. 

Lt.  Gunderson:  Please  furnish  runner  with  a  detail  to 
carry  out  1500  rounds  of  Chauchat  ammunition.  Also  give 
him  one  automatic  pistol  and  three  clips  for  my  first  sergeant 
and  two  pistol  holsters.  Sorry  to  bother  you  but  we  need  the 
stuff  to-night.  Q.  S.  Mills, 

2ndLt.,  Co.  G  1 68th  Inf. 


The  Deadly  "Sossidge"  361 

Intelligence  Report 

G.  C.  12,  4/4/18—3:45  A.M.  By  Pvt.  Skinner. 

Night  very  quiet.  Half  a  dozen  shrapnel  dropped  in 
vicinity  of  G.C.  at  7:30  p.m.  last  evening.     No  effect. 

QuiNCY  S.  Mills, 
2nd  Lt.,  G  Co.  1 68th  Inf. 

G.  C.  12,  4/4/18 — 2:30  P.M.  By  Pvt.  Lindquist. 

To  Lt.  Younkin:  Send  also  50  sandbags.  And  most 
important  of  all,  send  a  bottle  of  oil  for  the  automatic  rifles. 
A  bottle  of  oil  was  sent  to  each  P.  C.  when  the  platoons  came 
out,  but  we  can  find  none  here.  Lt.  Pearsall  may  have  taken 
it  back  to  the  support  by  mistake.  If  so,  please  ask  him  to 
return  it. 

Also  see  to  it  that  that  damned  "sossidge"  is  hauled  down 
again.  It's  spotting  "  dornicks  "  for  Fritz  on  the  C.  T.  between 
1 1  and  12,  this  afternoon.  One  of  them  just  burst  close  to  our 
Post  No.  I ,  touching  up  the  parapet  a  bit.  Mills. 

Morning  Report 


By  P\ 

^T.  Lindquist. 

C  12,  4/4/18. 

On  duty  this  day: 

Commissioned  Officers 

2 

Non-Coms.  Sergeants 

2 

Corporals 

5 

Privates 

25 

Total 

34 

Ammunition  Report 

Add  3400  rounds  Chauchat  ammunition 
"      320       "        auto-pistol,  cal.  .45 
"      100  F  I  grenades 

QuiNCY  S.  Mills, 
2nd  Lt.,  Co.  G,  i68th  Inf. 


362  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

G.  C.  12,  4/5/18—3:45  A.M.  By  Pvt.  Skinner. 

To  Lt.  Younkin:  (i)  There  are  two  dugouts  now  in  use. 
One  more  could  be  fitted  for  use  if  drained  of  the  water  now 
knee  deep  in  it.  None  of  the  three  is  more  than  ten  feet  under- 
ground. Only  the  P.  C.  dugout  has  two  entrances.  There  is  a 
fourth  and  older  large  dugout,  but  which  could  not  be  rendered 
safe  without  a  great  deal  of  work. 

(2)  The  P.  C,  dugout  has  been  fitted  recently  with  gas 
blankets,  which  are  in  good  condition ;  there  is  a  blanket  on  the 
entrance,  also,  of  the  dugout  used  for  the  men.  There  should 
be  a  blanket  also  on  the  dugout  now  knee-deep  in  water,  which 
we  used  for  shelter,  in  case  of  heavy  bombardment. 

(3)  The  trenches  are  in  poor  condition.  They  require 
drainage  and  revetment  throughout,  if  they  are  to  be  kept 
serviceable.  At  least  100  duckboards  and  several  hundred 
sandbags  would  be  required  to  put  these  trenches  in  first-class 
shape. 

(4)  There  is  a  great  deal  of  wire  both  in  front  of  and  behind 
this  G.  C,  but  it  is  old  and  requires  repair.  With  the  excep- 
tion of  one  point,  the  wire  furnishes  fairly  adequate  protection. 
There  should  be  some  new  wire  and  new  posts,  but  no  great 
amount  is  needed.  Quincy  S.  Mills, 

2nd  Lt,  G  Co.,  1 68th  Inf. 

Morning  Report 

G.  C.  12,  4/5/18— 3:45  A.M. 
On  duty  this  day : 
Officers  I 

Non-Coms  Sergeants         2 
Corporals         5 
Privates  25 

33 

Ammunition  Report 

On  hand: 

Chauchat  Ammunition    6000  rounds 

30-30  5000 


Day  of  No  Firing  363 

Auto-Pistol,  Cal.  .45  320  rounds 

Grenades  F  i  233       " 

"OF  25       " 

French  180      " 

Chauchat  clips  75 
Ammunition  expended  since  taking  over  G.C.  12 

at  4  P.M.,  April  3rd:  None. 

Work  Report 

All  spare  time  of  men  devoted  to  drainage,  sanitation  and 
renovation  of  ammunition  dump. 

Q.  S.  Mills, 
2nd  Lt.,  G  Co.,  1 68th  Inf. 

G.  C.  12,  4/5/18.  By  Pvt.  Lindquist. 

Lt.  Younkin  :  Please  have  a  spool  of  barbed  wire  sent  out 
this  afternoon.  Mills. 

G.  C.  12,  4/6/18 — 3:45  A.M.  Pvt.  Lindquist. 

Wire  patrol  of  4  men  at  dusk,  4/5/18,  mended  old  breaks  in 
wire  front  of  post  No.  5 ;  time,  30  min.  Enemy  flares  frequent. 
Enemy  artillery  4/5  shelled  G.T.  between  G.C.  11  and  12  for 
30  min,  at  2:30  p.m.  25  shells;  several  shells  fell  around  this 
G.C.  An  enemy  outpost  discovered  by  Sergeant  (name  il- 
legible) some  1500  yards  distant  in  woods  just  behind  old 
enemy;  attempted  sniping  on  this  post  proved  ineffective 
because  of  distance. 

Ammunition  report,  no  change ;  no  ammunition  fired  in  past 
24  hours. 

Morning  report :  No.  of  men  on  duty  this  day : 


Officers 
Non-Coms 

Privates 

.  Sergts. 
Corporals 

Total 

I 
2 
5 

33 

QUINCY  S. 
2nd  Lt.,  G  Co., 

Mills, 
1 68th  Inf. 

364  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

G.  C.  12,  4/7/18 — 3:45  A.M.  By  Pvt.  Skinner. 

To  Lt.  Younkin:  Patrols  from  this  post  yesterday  ex- 
amined an  old  trench  running  through  No-Man's-Land  to  the 
German  line;  with  the  resulting  conclusion  that  this  sap  is  the 
working  base  of  German  snipers  who  have  been  firing  on  the 
G.C's  posts  frequently  of  late.  From  this  sap  command  can 
be  had  of  the  principal  street  in  Badonviller,  which  I  under- 
stand has  been  fired  into  recently.  American  snipers,  if  sent 
out  systematically,  could  control  this  sap  and  use  it  as  effec- 
tively as  it  is  now  being  used  by  the  enemy. 

The  same  enemy  trench  mortar  reported  previously  from 
this  G.C.  as  being  located  in  a  wooded  hollow  opposite  was 
active  late  yesterday,  throwing  some  30  shells  at  the  Alabamans 
from  around  5  p.m. 

Worked  twenty  men  most  of  the  afternoon  draining  trenches 
and  rearranging  duckboards. 

Ordnance  property  to  be  turned  over  to  relieving  force: 
50,000  rounds  Chauchat  ammunition ;  200  rounds  auto-pistol 
am.,  180  French  citron  grenades;  10  Very  pistol  barrage 
shells;  one  Very  pistol  advance  barrage  shell;  8  advance 
barrage  trench  shells;  5  tromblon  star  shells;  13  tromblon  flare 
lights;  II  Very  pistol  gas  shells;  4  Very  flare  Hghts;  30  barrage 
rockets;  23  gas  rockets;  12  assorted  rocket,  flare  and  caterpillar 
lights. 

No  ammunition  expended  in  24  hours  past. 

QuiNCY  S.  Mills, 
2nd  Lt.,  Co.  G,  i68th  Inf. 

This  souvenir  of  trench  conditions  was  also  found. 

From  G.  C.  12.     4/5/18,  Time  3:35  a.m.  By  Pvt.  Skinner. 

To  Y.  M.  C.  A. :  Please  let  bearer  have  what  you  can  spare 
in  Sweets,  also  Writing  Paper  and  Envelopes. 

QuiNCY  S.  Mills, 
2nd  Lt.  Co.  G,  168  Inf. 

A  partially  illegible  penciled  sheet,  accompanying  the 
others  also  illustrates  a  detail  of  army  life  in  active  service. 
It  belongs  to  the  St.  Ciergues  period,  but  may  be  given 


Camp  Tidying  Up  365 

here  along  with  these  other  official  memoranda.  It  shows 
that  military  precision  is  unrelenting  even  in  presence  of 
the  enemy : 

To  the  Commanding  Officer,  2nd  Battalion,  i68th  Infantry: 

I.  Will  be  inspection  to-morrow,  January  31,  191 8,  by  the 
Division  Inspector. 

II.  All  buildings  and  rooms  occupied  by  the  troops  must 
be  scrubbed  and  thoroughly  policed.  The  bed  ticks  will  be 
arranged  uniformly  with  a  poncho  underneath  and  a  folded 
blanket  covering.  All  surplus  clothing  must  be  hung  up  and 
arranged  neatly  around  the  walls.  Shoes  Mall  be  cleaned  and 
arranged  neatly  near  each  man's  bunk.  Boots  will  be  washed 
off  and  hung  up  on  the  walls. 

III.  Street  will  be  policed  and  put  in  good  condition. 
Kitchen  will  be  policed  and  if  necessary  the  floor  will  be 
scrubbed.  Also  the  ground  around  the  kitchen  will  be  policed. 
Latrines  will  be  placed  in  good  sanitary  condition. 

IV.  This  preparational  work  must  be  completed  before  the 
troops  go  on  to  drill. 

V.  It  would  be  advisable  for  the  company  commander  to 
make  an  inspection  to  see  that  everything  is  in  readiness  for 
the  Divisional  Inspector,  before  he  proceeds  to  the  drill 
ground. 

Additional  Paragraph  II.  Mess  tins  will  be  cleaned  and 
placed  in  a  convenient  place  for  the  Inspector. 

Evidently  military  housekeeping  is  meticulous  to  the 
point  of  old-maidishness.  From  the  military  succinct- 
ness of  these  documents  an  intimate  and  enlightening 
acquaintance  with  the  fighting  front  may  be  derived. 
No  less  illuminating  but  very  different  in  style  is  the  letter 
in  which  Mills  breezily  records  his  experiences  for  the  same 
period : 

April  10,  191 8. 

Dear  Mother:  Well,  here  we  are  back  of  the  line  in 
support  again  without  any  casualties  yet  in  our  company 


366  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

after  two  hitches  in  the  trenches.  But  I  knock  on  wood, 
for,  while  our  sector  has  been  quiet  in  comparison  with 
what  is  going  on,  on  the  British  front,  company  G  has 
played  in  luck. 

Even  in  a  quiet  sector  there  are  always  shells,  or 
"dornicks"  as  the  men  refer  to  them  jocosely,  dropping 
and  machine  guns  playing,  so  if  a  man  is  careless  it's  more 
than  likely  to  be  his  funeral.  My  doctrine  of  keeping  my 
head  down  is  followed  religiously  by  this  outfit ;  every  man 
is  determined  not  to  take  any  chances  where  he  hasn't  a 
chance  of  getting  a  Boche,  and  useless  losses  have  been 
and  will,  I  believe,  continue  to  be  obviated. 

On  this  trip  up  I  had  a  platoon  in  combat  position  on 
the  line,  and  I  simply  cannot  tell  you  how  my  respect  for 
the  enlisted  men  of  this  company,  always  high,  was 
increased  by  being  in  the  trenches  with  them.  They  are 
certainly  soldier  stuff  of  the  very  highest  order  ever  put 
into  uniform.     It  is  a  real  privilege  to  serve  with  them. 

Odd  experiences  are  always  coming  to  everyone  all 
through  life,  but  one  of  my  oddest  came  to  me  while  doing 
this  trick  on  the  line.  You  remember  I  wrote  you  that  I 
was  in  command  of  the  company  for  a  time  some  months 
ago  while  most  of  the  other  officers  were  at  school.  Well, 
while  in  command  it  became  necessary  for  me  to  appoint  a 
sergeant,  and  I  named  the  man  I  thought  best  fitted  for 
the  place,  regardless  of  seniority.  On  the  first  round  in 
the  trenches  my  sergeant  made  good,  and  when  I  went  in 
who  should  I  have  to  run  things  for  me  but  my  own 
appointee.  The  way  he  worked  for  me  (naturally)  was  a 
caution.  We  didn't  have  a  hitch,  and  I  have  no  doubt 
that  in  case  of  just  a  plain  attempt  at  a  raid — not  an 
attack  in  force,  of  course — we  would  have  smashed  the 
Huns  to  a  finish.  This  sergeant's  name  is  Will  Scott. 
He  has  three  brothers  of  military  age,  and  all  are  in  the 
service.     He  says  that  his  mother  only  wishes  she  had 


Trench  Anxiety  367 

four  more  sons  to  put  in  uniform.  Scott  was  a  junior 
corporal  when  I  was  sent  to  the  company,  and  had  the 
former  policy  of  seniority  in  promotions  been  adhered  to 
he  would  be  a  corporal  still.  The  way  he  has  proved  up 
has  had  the  very  good  effect  of  establishing  a  precedent 
for  abolishing  the  seniority  system  in  the  company,  and 
this  is  a  step  in  the  right  direction. 

I  suppose  you  have  noticed  in  the  papers  the  account 
of  Capt.  Steller's  misfortune.  [The  original  commander  of 
Company  G.]  He  stepped  out  of  his  dugout  while  there 
was  no  shell  firing  going  on  in  the  immediate  vicinity,  and 
was  struck  on  the  head  by  some  sort  of  missile  that 
apparently  dropped  out  of  clear  space.  He  was  struck 
on  top  of  the  helmet,  which  kept  the  blow  from  killing  him, 
but  he  has  entirely  lost  the  sight  of  the  left  eye,  and  is  still 
in  the  hospital.  I  doubt  if  he  will  be  returned  to  active 
duty.  Lieut.  Younkin  has  had  charge  of  the  company 
practically  all  of  the  time  it  has  been  up  front,  and  has 
acquitted  himself  creditably.  The  captain's  injury  was  a 
very  strange  incident.  He  was  alone  at  the  time,  and  says 
he  heard  nothing  before  he  was  struck.  Some  shells 
were  going  away  over  from  both  sides,  and  one  theory  was 
that  a  sliver  falling  from  one  of  these  in  transit  happened 
to  hit  him;  either  that  or  it  was  a  sniper's  bullet,  but  if 
the  latter  it  seems  he  would  have  heard  it.  His  injury  is 
the  most  serious  sustained  by  anyone  in  the  company  thus 
far. 

So  far  as  my  stay  in  the  front  line  was  concerned,  it  was 
extremely  quiet,  but  naturally  the  strain  of  being  on  the 
qui  vive  is  sufficiently  wearing  to  render  rest  necessary  by 
the  time  a  stint  is  over,  even  if  nothing  happens.  What 
I  minded  most  was  the  mud,  and  the  floundering  around 
over  slippery  duckboards  making  my  rounds  in  darkness 
so  black  you  couldn't  see  your  hand  before  your  face. 
My  rubber  hip  boots  kept  my  feet  dry,  but  they  sure  did 


368  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

pick  me  up  and  throw  me  down  often  enough.  And 
after  such  strenuous  exercise  I  never  had  any  trouble 
rolHng  into  my  bunk  down  in  the  dugout  and  sleeping 
like  a  log. 

On  coming  back  from  my  first  experience  right  in  the 
line  I  am  "bothered,"  as  these  Iowa  lads  put  it,  much  less 
by  the  danger  of  such  life  than  by  its  acute  discomfort. 
Of  course  I  did  not  have  to  stand  attack  and  after  I  have 
put  in  some  time  in  a  more  lively  neighborhood  I  may 
revise  my  feelings. 

I  wasn't  annoyed  any  by  barbed  wire  posts  and  stumps 
creeping  craftily  upon  me  in  the  darkness  this  time,  but 
maybe  that  will  come  later,  too.  I  had  some  men  who 
were  always  hearing  Huns  in  the  wire  after  nightfall,  but 
we  never  found  any  of  them. 

The  trench  rats  are  all  you  have  heard  them  represented 
as  being.  I  got  so  that  I  could  sleep  O.  K.  with  them 
capering  over  my  face  and  person.  They  furnish  diver- 
sion for  the  men  on  post,  who  rig  up  traps  and  catch  them 
during  the  night  hours  that  pass  too  slowly  for  them  on 
watch.  One  of  my  runners  swore  he  woke  up  one  night  to 
catch  a  rat  in  the  act  of  putting  on  his  boots  and  walking 
off  in  them,  but  I  didn't  see  that.  Some  of  the  men  on 
post  declare  that  all  trench  rats  are  equipped  with  rubber 
boots — size  lo's — and  gas  masks.  You  would  be  amazed 
at  the  amount  of  fun  the  fellows  have  in  the  trenches. 
And  it  is  an  odd  thing  that  the  gas  hasn't  killed  off  the  rats 
all  along  the  line.  We  were  very  fortunate  in  not  getting 
a  single  shot  of  gas  this  time.  I  do  not  mind  being  equally 
fortunate  all  the  time,  for  gas  masks  are  very  unpleasant 
things  to  wear.  They  make  you  feel  that  you  can't  get 
out  and  scrap  if  you  have  to;  but  then  the  other  fellow 
has  to  wear  his  muzzle  too,  if  he  comes  over  while  there  is 
gas  about,  so  it's  as  broad  as  it's  long. 

Will  write  you  more  on  the  trench  subject  another  time. 


Mile.  Printemps  369 

We  are  now  back  in  reserve,  and  are  going  further  back 
in  a  day  or  two. 
Much  love  to  Dad  and  yourself,  Quincy. 

April  14,  1918. 

Dear  Mother  :  Here  are  a  couple  of  views  of  the  first 
place  [St.  Ciergues]  we  were  in  after  leaving  the  fort. 
Sorry  I  had  to  erase  the  name  to  comply  with  censorship 
regulations.  This  is  the  old  inn  I  lived  at  [Hotel  Fevre], 
and  the  window  with  the  shutter  is  the  one  from  which  I 
used  to  watch  the  water  in  the  spillway  from  the  lake. 
The  other  card  shows  a  road  along  the  lake,  with  our  town 
on  the  other  side. 

This  inn  is  the  one  where  we  got  the  wonderful  pommes 
de  terre  and  chaud  chocolat.  We  haven't  been  able  to 
get  any  food  anywhere  else  in  France  to  touch  what  was 
set  before  us  there.     We  hope  to  return  there  later. 

Are  being  blessed  with  wonderful  spring  weather  now. 
The  fruit  trees  are  all  bursting  out  in  glorious  bouquets 
all  over  the  countryside.  And  I  am  blossoming  out  in  my 
dress  up  duds  for  the  first  time  since  my  arrival  in  France. 
Decided  to  make  the  concession  to  Mile.  Printemps,  since 
she  was  smiling  on  us  so.  If  there  were  only  some  pretty 
girls  around  this  wouldn't  be  such  a  bad  war  at  present, 
but  the  pretty  girls  aren't. 

Much  love  to  Dad  and  yourself,  Quincy. 

April  17,  1 91 8. 

Dear  Mother  :  So  you  know  at  last  what  it  feels  like 
to  cast  your  ballot  1  Well !  Well !  None  of  my  ancestors 
ever  had  mothers  old  enough  to  vote.     I  can  just  see  you 

and  Mrs. and  Mrs. chewing  on  your  long  black 

cigars  as  you  put  down  the  X  marks  opposite  the  candi- 
dates' names. 

I  am  not  at  all  surprised  at  the  way  you  voted,  or  the 

24 


370  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

reasoning  by  which  you  were  influenced.  I  am  glad 
you  have  at  last  had  the  pleasure  of  voting;  if  we  could 
only  both  vote  for  Irish  conscription  now,  and  then  help 
enforce  it,  we  would  feel  that  we  had  done  enough.  I  am 
sore  clean  through  at  the  Irish  for  the  part  they  have 
played  or  haven't  played,  in  this  war.  The  Irish  are  going 
to  wake  up  some  fine  day  to  find  out  that  they've  got 
themselves  into  a  position  where  nobody  will  have  any 
sympathy  for  them. 

I  feel  considerably  better  after  having  got  this  business 
off  my  mind,  and  will  proceed  to  tell  you,  before  I  forget  it, 
that  bit  of  interesting  news  I  promised  regarding  the  vio- 
lets I  sent  you  about  two  weeks  ago.  I  picked  them  just 
at  the  door  of  my  dugout  in  the  ruined  city  up  on  the 
Lorraine  front  [Badonviller],  the  dugout  in  question  being 
situated  under  the  remains  of  a  shell-shattered  chateau. 
I  know  you  will  value  the  violets  more  now.  And  I  wish 
you  could  enjoy  the  beauties  of  the  spring  blossoms  with 
me  here  in  France ;  they  never  before  seemed  so  beautiful 
to  my  eyes,  the  fruit  trees  bursting  out  like  gigantic  pink 
and  white  bouquets  everywhere.  As  I  passed  along  a 
road  near  here  to-day  I  noticed  a  peach  tree  all  in  bloom 
although  it  had  been  blown  over  by  a  shell  which  had 
struck  in  its  roots,  as  if  it  enraged  Kultur  to  see  anything 
so  fair. 

A  matter  which  will  interest  you,  I  know,  is  in  regard 
to  my  service  in  this  regiment.  All  U.  S.  N.  A.  and  U.  S. 
R.  officers  serving  in  National  Guard  units  have  been 
asked  to  resign  their  training  camp  commissions  and 
accept  Guard  commissions  of  the  same  grade.  The 
reason  assigned  for  this  request  is  that  all  promotions  must 
be  made  within  the  N.  G.  branch  in  N.  G.  units,  and  that 
officers  holding  commissions  in  other  branches  cannot  be 
advanced  in  the  Guard  and  will  be  shifted  to  other  units 
unless  they  transfer  to  the  N.  G. 


U.  S.  versus  N.  G.  37i 

Promotion  doesn't  worry  me.  Having  come  this  far 
with  the  organization  I  feel  a  reluctance  not  to  see  things 
through  with  it,  particularly  as  the  more  of  the  men  in  the 
ranks  I  see  the  more  I  admire  them.  But  if  I  am  shifted 
to  a  drafted  unit  it  need  not  surprise  you,  although  I  do 
not  look  for  a  change  any  time  soon.  And  it  may  be 
that  no  changes  will  be  made,  as  the  changing  would  have 
to  be  so  general.  Personally,  I  think  the  distinction  a  very 
foolish  one;  it  is  all  the  U.  S.  army,  and  all  commissions 
should  be  plain  U.  S.  But  the  regular  army  is  jealous  of 
the  U.  S.  insignia,  and  the  National  Guard  is  anxious  to 
preserve  the  integrity  of  that  branch. 

Wonder  where  I'll  turn  up  next — with  a  bunch  of 
conscripts  from  the  Golden  Gate  or  from  Dixie?  For  my 
part,  I  would  like  very  much  to  see  the  sectional  line 
obliterated  altogether,  and  men  from  every  State  in  every 
regiment.  From  the  replacement  troops  we  have  just 
received,  I  gather  there  is  something  of  the  sort  going  on; 
if  the  same  rate  of  change  should  continue,  this  could  not  be 
classified  as  an  Iowa  regiment,  strictly  speaking,  very  long. 
And  how  much  better  it  would  be  for  the  United  States 
Army  to  be  really  a  National  Army  and  not  a  combination 
of  sectional  armies.  Of  course  the  negro  troops  would 
have  to  be  kept  separate,  but  what  has  become  of  them 
anyway?  I  never  hear  of  them;  are  they  training,  and 
where  ? 

Any  change  in  organizations  for  me  I  think  will  be  ex- 
tremely unlikely  until  after  I  go  to  one  of  the  army  schools. 
Unless  events  interfere  with  the  regular  sessions,  I  rather 
expect  to  go  about  the  middle  of  May,  a  month  from  now. 
But  we  may  all  be  so  busy  in  a  larger  school  that  we  won't 
get  any  special  instruction  for  a  while.  The  terms  of 
these  schools  are  from  five  to  six  weeks,  so  that  will  keep 
me  going  well  into  the  summer.  And  I  am  making 
application  for  my  regular  leave  of  some  ten  days  to  come 


372  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

along  some  of  these  times.  It  was  due  April  12,  after 
four  months'  service  on  this  side,  but  for  the  present  all 
leaves  are  held  up  for  both  officers  and  men  because  the 
war  business  is  just  a  little  too  pressing  to  admit  of  ' '  per- 
missions"— as  the  French  call  furloughs.  I  am  going 
through  the  formality  of  asking  for  mine  in  the  hope  of 
thus  keeping  from  losing  it  entirely. 

You  ask  about  whether  you  shall  send  packages  of 
Sunday  papers  to  me ;  I  think  not.  The  clippings  I  enjoy ; 
the  additional  bulk  of  the  Sunday  issues  would  hardly 
justify  themselves,  I  believe.  All  the  gleanings  you  have 
sent  me  about  Hylan  I  have  read  with  much  interest, 
amusement — and  disgust.  I  have  a  premonition  that  it 
w411  not  be  necessary  for  me  to  lift  the  lid  off  the  town 
when  I  return.  I  hope  the  City  Hall  is  nailed  down,  and 
that  Mitchel  took  care  to  take  out  burglar  insurance  on 
the  golden  statue  of  Civic  Virtue  atop  the  Municipal 
Building. 

Much  love  to  Dad  and  yourself — and  kick  the  cats  for 
me,  QuiNCY. 

Exactly  where  the  preceding  letter  was  written  it  is  not 
possible  to  say,  but  those  which  follow  down  to  the  end  of 
the  chapter  were  unquestionably  written  at  Camp  Ker- 
Avor,  where  the  Battalion  had  a  ten-day  rest,  and  whose 
surrounding  scenery  is  accurately  described : 

April  20,  1 91 8. 

Dear  Mother  :  The  forest  pictured  on  this  card  is  not 
where  we  are  resting,  though  it  is  very  suggestive  of  our 
present  quarters.  It  would  be  a  nice  place  a  little  later 
on,  but  the  weather  is  still  too  cool  and  rainy  for  such 
a  location  to  be  entirely  comfortable,  especially  underfoot. 

Your  solicitude  regarding  sending  packages  over  here 
seems  to  have  been  relieved  forcibly  by  the  Government, 


Cutting  Irony  373 

which  has  decided  to  prohibit  the  sending  of  parcels  to 
soldiers,  I  see.  I  am  not  surprised.  The  package  game 
has  been  abused  greatly;  so  much  stuff  that  would  spoil 
before  it  got  here  has  been  sent;  and  there  has  been  so 
much  sent  that  wasn't  worth  the  transportation. 

In  regard  to  your  inquiry  as  to  what  sort  of  knitted 
goods  to  send,  I  repeat  that  gloves  are  the  soldiers'  great- 
est want  in  the  winter.  They  never  have  enough,  and 
often  really  suffer  for  want  of  covering  for  their  hands. 
The  wristlets  do  not  answer.  Quincy. 

April  23,  1918. 

Dear  Mother:  I  have  been  absorbing  so  much  sleep 
the  last  few  days  that  I  am  afraid  I  have  let  time  go  by 
when  I  should  have  been  writing  to  you.  It  is  amazing 
how  much  you  can  sleep  over  here,  even  in  a  dugout  up 
on  the  front  line. 

I  have  just  written  a  friend  a  letter  of  sympathy  over 
the  terrible  pHght  he  is  in.  He  wrote  me  that  he  was 
doing  something  or  other  for  a  war  board  which  is  sup- 
posed to  be  accomplishing  something  or  other  and  is 
actually  providing  soft  jobs,  I  suppose,  at  Washington. 
He  complained  bitterly  over  the  hardship  of  having  to  live 
in  a  city  so  overcrowded  that  he  had  to  occupy  a  hotel 
room,  or  suite  or  some  place  or  other,  with  another  similarly 
imposed  upon  chair  warmer  instead  of  by  himself.  I  told 
him  how  sorry  I  was  he  had  to  feel  so  keenly  the  ruthless 
heel  of  Frightf  ulness,  and  that  something  would  have  to  be 
done  about  such  indignities  being  heaped  on  free-bom 
American  citizens.  I  also  advised  him  that  if  he  had  once 
resided  in  a  dugout  some  fifteen  feet  underground  where 
there  was  always  at  least  two  inches  of  water  on  the  floor 
he  wouldn't  be  so  choice  about  his  sleeping  quarters.  I 
suggested,  too,  that  if  more  attention  were  paid  to  swelling 
the  ranks  of  our  army  over  here  instead  of  those  of  the 


374  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

safety  zone  army  in  the  States,  a  great  deal  more  would 
be  accomplished  toward  licking  the  Huns.  I  do  believe 
very  firmly  that  there's  too  much  waste  of  energy  in 
commissions  and  boards  which  duplicate  and  reduplicate 
work,  and  even  operate  at  cross  purposes,  thereby  hamper- 
ing the  delivery  of  both  men  and  supplies  on  this  side  of 
the  Atlantic. 

We  are  leading  a  very  prosaic  life  now,  back  in  a  rest 
camp  in  the  woods.  The  last  sensation  we  had,  and  a 
very  mild  one  at  that,  was  when  a  Boche  airman  sailed 
over  the  last  town  I  wrote  you  from  and  peppered  machine 
gun  bullets  down  on  our  streets  while  our  batteries  burst 
shrapnel  around  him.  The  most  thrilling  incident  I  have 
witnessed  up  at  the  front  was  something  of  the  same  sort 
that  occurred  one  morning  about  5  A.M.  when  a  Boche 
flier  fell  into  a  trap  laid  for  him  by  our  artillery,  which  let 
him  circle  lower  and  lower  until  the  gun  layers  had  all  the 
"dope"  on  him.  Then  all  the  batteries  within  range 
opened  up  on  him  at  once,  and  he  turned  tail  and  headed 
for  Germany  "like  a  bat  out  of  hell,"  as  my  sergeant  very 
graphically  described  it. 

Anti-aircraft  shrapnel  bursts  with  a  peculiar  detonation 
that  seems  to  ring  all  around  the  heavens  when  it  goes  off 
anywhere  near  over  your  head,  and  the  noise  of  the 
bombardment  of  this  lone  aviator  was  really  awe-inspiring. 
He  came  scudding  low  right  over  our  position,  every 
wire  even  of  his  machine  standing  out  in  clear  relief  against 
the  sky  in  the  early  morning  light,  angry  bursts  of  black 
shell  smoke  popping  out  all  around  him.  Each  shell  burst 
under  the  tail  of  his  machine  seemed  to  accelerate  his  speed 
homeward  by  about  twenty  miles  an  hour.  He  was  surely 
going  some  when  he  passed  over  us,  but  he  wasn't  too  busy 
with  trying  to  get  away  to  turn  his  machine  gun  on  us  and 
do  his  best  to  take  some  of  us  along  with  him  if  he  had  to 
be  shot  down.     The  bullets  whined  down  into  our  trenches 


Sisters  Defy  Shrapnel  375 

close  by  but  we  got  off  untouched.  So  did  he,  although 
I  don't  see  how  he  ever  managed  it.  Altogether,  his  flight 
made  the  most  sensational  spectacle  I  have  ever  witnessed. 
Only  the  proper  climax  was  lacking,  the  shooting  down  of 
the  Hun  machine.  What  a  movie  that  episode  would  have 
made!  Indeed,  our  everyday  sights  over  here  beat  the 
movies,  and  even  the  Follies,  all  hollow.  Too  much 
excitement  grows  stale  on  anyone,  though. 

Back  in  the  town  we  just  moved  out  of  I  used  to  marvel 
at  the  manner  in  which  the  French  urchins  would  play  out 
in  the  streets,  racing  down  the  hill  before  my  billet  in  the 
same  sort  of  coaster  wagons  the  kids  delight  so  in,  back  in 
New  York,  and  not  pay  the  sHghtest  attention  to  German 
shells  shrieking  past  and  bursting  just  over  the  hill  on  a 
road  that  the  Fritzes  were  always  touching  up.  This 
obliviousness  to  danger,  particularly  in  view  of  the  shell- 
shattered  buildings  all  around  them,  struck  me  as  being 
so  remarkable  in  children  as  to  be  almost  unbeHevable. 
The  manner  in  which  civilians  clung  to  the  remains  of  their 
homes,  even  in  the  town  we  occupied  up  within  a  mile 
of  the  first  line  [Badonviller]  never  ceased  to  be  a  wonder 
to  me .  Among  the  inhabitants  were  two  unusually  pretty 
sisters,  about  sixteen  and  eighteen,  who  stuck  it  out 
through  bombardment  after  bombardment.  It  was  the 
strangest  sight  I  ever  saw  to  see  these  two  girls  come 
strolling  down  the  street,  daintily  dressed,  apparently 
wholly  unappalled  by  the  scene  of  desolation  around  them, 
paying  no  heed  to  the  voice  of  war  even  when  the  big  guns 
were  talking  loudly  on  both  sides  of  the  line,  unless  the 
Boche  shrapnel  burst  unusually  close.  And  then  they 
would  scamper  for  a  dugout,  laughing  as  if  it  were  a  huge 
joke  to  be  shot  at. 

The  last  time  we  were  up  they  were  still  there,  although 
a  shell  had  struck  one  corner  of  their  house  and  demolished 
it.     I  could  never  figure  why  these  girls  and  their  mother 


376  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

— the  family  was  entirely  respectable — or  any  of  the  other 
residents  of  the  town  persisted  in  staying  in  the  face  of 
such  conditions.  To  tell  you  the  truth,  I  strongly  sus- 
pected all  of  them  of  being  German  agents ;  certainly  the 
Boche  were  well  enough  posted  on  what  we  were  doing  to 
have  had  telephone  connection  from  the  town  right  out 
overNo-Man's-Landtotheirheadquarters.  The  only  com- 
pensation was  that  the  French  were  equally  well  advised 
regarding  everything  the  Germans  did.  The  accuracy  of 
our  information  was  as  remarkable  as  that  of  the  data 
Fritz  managed  to  compile  on  us.  When  the  Americans 
take  over  a  definite  and  appreciable  sector,  I  hope  that 
they  will  clear  out  every  civilian  from  an  area  extending 
back  several  miles  from  the  line. 

One  source  of  information  which  the  Huns  work  to  the 
utmost  of  its  possibilities  is  the  observation  balloon,  or 
"sausage,"  which,  as  you  know,  is  anchored  at  a  distance 
too  far  behind  the  lines  to  be  hurt  by  artillery  fire,  and  is 
run  up  to  a  great  height.  From  it  observers  telephone 
to  the  artillery  all  activities  they  pick  up.  On  clear  days 
the  Boche  always  have  a  whole  flock  of  these  big  bags 
floating,  and  I  blame  them  for  the  artillery  fire  which 
pestered  us  from  time  to  time  while  we  were  up  front.  I 
used  to  spend  all  my  spare  time  cursing  those  "sossidges," 
and  in  particular  one  which  looked  down  so  inquisitively 
into  my  position  that  I  felt  its  observer  could  see  right 
into  my  dugout  and  know  exactly  what  I  had  for  each  meal. 
The  only  effective  weapon  against  the  "sausage"  is  the 
aeroplane,  and  its  chance  of  sneaking  up  and  making  a 
killing  before  the  big  bag  can  be  hauled  down  is  always 
slim.  But  some  days  ago  the  first  two  American  fliers  on 
this  part  of  the  front  went  out  for  game,  and  they  got 
this  same ' '  sossidge ' '  that  had  been  my  particular  aversion. 
Because  it  rode  exceptionally  high  they  were  able  to  nail 
it,  although  the  Fritzes  hauled  down  at  it  like  mad,  before 


Cats  of  No  Man's  Land  377 

it  could  be  got  to  safety.  To  quote  Briggs,  the  Tribune 
cartoonist :  ' '  Oh,  boy !  but  wasn't  that  a  grand  and  glorious 
feeHn',"  when  I  heard  about  the  drop  in  German  sausage. 
The  other  officers  had  been  incHned  to  kid  me  about  my 
great  aversion  to  it,  but  since  it  developed  that  the  Ameri- 
can aviators  went  after  their  game  because  the  artillery 
commander  of  this  sector  told  them  that  the  greatest  favor 
they  could  do  him  would  be  to  stop  the  "sossidge  "  observ- 
ation, I  have  not  been  kidded  so  much.  German  sausage 
stock  isn't  nearly  so  high  these  days,  either — not  much 
higher  than  the  treetops,  where  it  can't  do  much  damage. 

The  French  also  use  these  observation  balloons,  but  they 
do  not  dot  the  sky  with  them  so  thickly  as  do  the  Germans. 

I  know  you  will  be  interested  to  learn  that  several  of  my 
men  reported  seeing  cats  roaming  around  in  No-Man's- 
Land  while  we  were  up  on  the  front  line.  I  did  not  see 
any  of  them  myself,  but  I  am  not  surprised  that  they  were 
there,  attracted  from  the  deserted  towns  along  the  line  to 
the  trench  systems  which  certainly  teem  with  food  for 
them.  The  men  suggest  in  their  letters  that  Chinese 
troops  ought  to  solve  the  trench  warfare  problem  because 
it  wouldn't  be  necessary  to  have  any  Commissary  Depart- 
ment for  them. 

Speaking  of  ruined  towns,  there  was  just  west  of  the 
place  where  we  were  "in,"  in  a  locality  where  the  lines 
were  very  far  apart,  an  absolutely  deserted  village,  situ- 
ated entirely  in  No-Man's-Land.  From  our  lines  it 
appeared  to  be  less  shot  up  than  some  of  the  places  behind 
the  lines,  which  is  only  natural,  after  all.  And  speaking 
of  cats,  there  was  a  fine  yellow  and  white  Tommy  at  my 
billet  in  the  village  we  just  left;  all  you  had  to  do  was  pat 
him  on  the  head  and  he  would  swarm  up  to  your  shoulders 
and  rub  against  your  head.  He  didn't  care  to  be  held  in 
your  arms,  but  he  liked  to  sit  clean  up  on  your  shoulder. 
I  was  sorry  to  leave  him.     We  have  a  nice  yellow  and 


378  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

white  kitten  here  at  this  rest  camp,  but  it  doesn't  know  the 
shoulder  stunt. 

We  are  now  occupying  barracks  in  a  very  pretty  wooded 
locality,  and  are  comfortable  enough  except  for  the  fact 
that  all  the  officers  are  in  one  room,  and  the  surroundings 
render  writing  rather  difficult.  Our  mail  continues  to  be 
irregular ;  it  may  be  that  the  letter  in  which  you  referred  to 
them  may  have  gone  astray,  but  I  have  never  had  any 
reference  from  you  to  the  pair  of  shoulder  bars  I  sent  you 
some  time  ago.  On  the  chance  that  they  may  have  been 
lost,  I  am  sending  you  another  pair,  which  I  have  worn. 
I  hope  that  they  will  not  be  mashed  in  transit,  but  if  they 
are  you  can  have  them  straightened  out. 

Well,  I'll  have  to  close  for  this  time.  Much  love  to  Dad 
and  yourself,  and  remember  me  to  all  the  friends. 

QUINCY. 

April  28,  1 91 8. 

Dear  Mother  :  This  has  certainly  been  package  week 
with  me.  Day  before  yesterday  I  received  one  of  the 
boxes  of  cigars  Dad  mailed  to  me,  not  the  one  with  the 
pencils  inclosed,  however,  which  will  come  later  I  suppose, 
but  the  small  box  of  Huyler's,  sent  with  Sweet's  compli- 
ments, and  the  copy  of  A  Night  at  an  Inn.  Yesterday  I 
got  the  big  box  of  smokes  Bill  Gramer  started  toward  me 
some  time  ago.  And  to-day  the  package  of  "American 
Mixed"  candy  arrived.  It  is  needless  to  say  that  lam 
very  popular.  Your  box  of  cigars  arrived  in  the  nick  of 
time.  I  had  just  opened  the  last  one  I  had  on  hand. 
This  makes  the  third  I  have  received  from  you.  The 
boxlet  of  Huyler's  was  delivered  right  after  supper,  and 
it  afforded  each  of  us  officers  a  sweet  bite  to  end  up  our 
meal. 

The  box  from  Bill  was  a  regular  Santa's  pack.  It  con- 
tained  two   boxes   of    "Corona"    cigars, — which   won't 


Dunsany  and  Service  379 

mean  much  to  you,  but  would  mean  a  lot  to  a  smoker,  for 
that  is  one  of  the  finest  brands  made,  and  is  Bill's  regular 
smoke  for  himself,  so  you  know  how  good  it  must  be — 
I, GOO  Murad  cigarettes,  two  pound  cans  of  pipe  tobacco, 
and  72  packages  of  Bull  Durham.  My  platoon  is 
naturally  sharing  with  me  the  tobacco  and  the  candy, 
which  is  just  fine. 

I  enjoyed  the  Dunsany  curtain  (and  hair)  raiser,  but 
I  agree  with  you  that  it  has  less  to  recommend  it  than  some 
of  his  other  plays.  What  a  strange  mind  he  has.  I  hope 
that  he  may  survive  the  war,  for  his  handiwork  shows 
more  innate  genius  than  any  that  has  been  produced  by 
other  writers  of  the  present  day.  Nevertheless,  the 
things  that  hit  home  to  the  men  over  here  are  the  poems 
of  Robert  W.  Service.  You  have  to  do  a  hitch  actually 
in  the  front  line  trenches,  and  see  the  ghostly  flares  throw 
their  light  over  No-Man's-Land  at  night  to  realize  how 
fundamental  is  his  understanding  of  the  soldier  and  the 
soldier's  life  in  the  present  war.  I  would  like  to  have  a 
volume  of  his  war  poems,  but  I  am  not  particularly 
interested  in  his  Songs  of  the  Yukon. 

This  "American  Mixture,"  on  which  I  am  munching  as 
I  write,  certainly  hits  the  spot.  It's  one  of  my  favorites. 
And  Lieutenant  Nelson  sends  his  especial  thanks  for  it. 
As  he  does  not  smoke  he  had  been  bawling  me  out  for  not 
getting  anything  for  him  in  any  of  my  packages.  He 
sure  is  one  good  scout.  Many,  many  thanks  for  your 
and  Dad's  goodness  to  me,  and  much  love, 

QUINCY. 

May  I,  1918. 

Dear  Mother  :  You  would  surely  enjoy  visiting  the  vil- 
lage in  which  I  am  now  residing.  It  is  a  quaint  collection 
of  Swiss  huts  situated  in  a  thick  forest,  largely  of  hemlock. 
The  French  soldiers  who  have  preceded  us  here  have  spent 


3^0  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

a  lot  of  time  and  artistic  talent  on  the  construction  of 
rustic  chapels  and  villas.  A  more  picturesque  environ- 
ment in  which  to  take  a  rest  after  a  tour  of  duty  in  the 
trenches  could  scarcely  be  imagined.  The  very  forest 
aisles  among  the  trunks  of  the  stately  hemlocks  are  rest- 
ful. This  would  be  an  ideal  place  to  be  in  the  summer, 
but  now,  in  the  time  of  spring  rain,  it  has  its  disadvan- 
tages. One  of  these  being  that  we  are  all  crowded  to- 
gether in  a  one-room  bungalow  which  is  too  small  for  half 
a  dozen  officers  to  be  crated  in  day  after  day,  and  grows 
progressively  more  constricted  as  the  days  pass. 

Letter  writing  is  almost  impossible  in  such  crowded 
conditions.  Could  I  devote  myself  peacefully  to  that 
pastime  I  could  enjoy  myself  greatly  in  spite  of  being  shut 
indoors,  but  as  it  is  I  am  having  to  kill  too  much  time  at 
absolutely  nothing.  Too  bad  that  we  could  not  make  the 
most  of  an  ideal  rest  billet.  For  had  the  weather  been 
kind  I  would  have  enjoyed  myself  thoroughly  during  many 
pleasant  hours  seated  with  my  back  against  one  of  these 
hemlock  trees  with  my  pad  on  my  knee. 

Spring  has  certainly  outdone  herself  in  this  instance  to 
prove  what  a  fickle  wench  she  is.  After  those  days  of 
sunshine  and  blossoms,  of  which  I  wrote  you  lately,  we 
have  scarcely  seen  the  sun  for  a  week.  Day  follows  upon 
day  with  damp  chilly  rain,  varied  once  on  the  20th  by  a 
snow  flurry.  I  am  led  to  believe  that  French  weather  is 
as  variable  as  the  French  temperament  has  always  been 
represented.  I  recollect  very  distinctly  nights  in  the 
middle  of  January  so  warm  that  I  sat  in  my  room  back  at 
the  inn,  overlooking  the  lake  I  wrote  you  of  [St.  Ciergues], 
with  my  window  open,  and  the  air  so  balmy  that  I  felt 
almost  that  I  could  take  my  coat  off.  But  it's  no  use 
bawling  out  Mile.  Spring — any  more  than  any  other 
fair  demoiselle. 

The  men  take  their  isolation  pretty  hard.     They  feel 


Soldiers'  Grievances  381 

particularly  aggrieved  that  they  have  had  a  pay  day  out 
in  the  woods  where  there  is  no  place  but  the  Y.  M.  C.  A. 
to  expend  their  francs.  They  would  like  to  invest  some 
of  their  remuneration  for  fighting  the  Boche  in  vin  rouge. 
As  I  said  before,  there  is  very  little  drinking  to  excess. 
But  whoever  heard  of  a  soldier  who  wouldn't  crack  a  bottle 
now  and  then?  Nor  is  it  anything  to  a  soldier's  discredit 
so  long  as  he  doesn't  make  a  sot  of  himself. 

You  would  laugh  could  you  read  the  protestations  as 
written  by  the  men  to  their  wives  and  sweethearts  regarding 
the  absolute  impossibility  of  French  women.  They  as- 
sert that  the  pretty  French  girls  they  had  heard  so  much 
about  are  just  as  pretty  as  they  have  found  France  to  be 
sunny.  One  of  them  declared  that  he  had  been  unable  to 
discover  any  girls  between  the  ages  of  3  and  83,  thus  com- 
menting on  the  curious  phenomenon  I  mentioned  to  you 
some  time  ago :  the  fact  that  young  women  are  as  scarce 
as  young  men  over  here.  Maybe  the  girls  are  too  shy  to 
reveal  themselves  to  the  Yankee  soldiers,  but  I  never 
heard  the  French  girls  accused  of  any  such  shyness. 

Perhaps  I  have  mentioned  before  that  an  almost  uni- 
versal defect  among  the  French  that  I  have  noted  is  bad 
teeth.  Men  and  women  both  seem  to  pay  no  attention  to 
their  teeth.  I  have  seen  a  number  of  French  girls  who 
were  really  good  looking  until  they  opened  their  mouths. 
I  supposed  that  this  carelessness  of  the  teeth  was  true  only 
of  the  less  educated  people  I  had  come  in  contact  with, 
but  our  army  dentists  tell  me  that  dentistry,  as  it  is 
practised  at  home  for  the  saving  of  teeth,  is  practically 
unknown  except  in  the  larger  cities  over  here,  the  French 
dental  surgeon's  chief  tool  being  his  forceps.  I  cannot 
understand  how  such  a  condition  can  exist. 

To  return  to  the  subject  of  our  resting  place,  it  is  well 
known  for  its  architectural  attractions ;  in  fact  I  had  seen 
pictures  of  several  of  its  most  striking  features  printed  in 


382  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

the  Sunday  pictorial  sheets  of  the  New  York  papers  before 
leaving  home.  Another  aspect  in  which  we  are  fortunate 
is  in  being  the  first  American  troops  in  this  place.  The 
people  of  the  district  are  better  off  and  more  intelligent 
than  those  in  the  places  where  we  have  been  billeted 
previously,  and  they  look  upon  us  less  as  a  source  of 
revenue  than  as  friends  in  need  for  whom  they  cannot  do 
too  much.  We  succeeded  in  locating  our  officers'  mess 
at  a  farmhouse,  where  the  geese  are  properly  scandalized 
by  our  invasion.  And  I  had  the  pleasure  of  partaking  of 
my  first  feast  of  goose — you  remember  we  were  always 
going  to  roast  one — as  cooked  very  palatably  by  the  mis- 
tress of  this  farmhouse,  who  would  have  been  willing,  I 
believe,  to  serve  us  for  almost  nothing,  and  who  is  over- 
whelmed by  our  largesse.  She  is  as  good  a  cook — in  a 
different  way — as  Madame  Delanne,  and  her  home  is 
probably  even  older  than  Madame  Delanne's,  for  it  was 
built  in  1 61 7,  as  proclaimed  by  an  inscription  on  the  key- 
stone of  the  great  door  to  the  barn,  which  is  constructed 
as  a  part  of  the  dwelling  proper,  according  to  the  universal 
custom. 

The  people  in  this  section  are  much  cleaner  than  those 
in  the  places  we  have  occupied  before;  the  fields  are 
neater,  and  there  is  an  appearance  of  prosperity  about  the 
whole  countryside.  The  soil  here  is  more  productive, 
which  is,  of  course,  the  explanation  of  the  better  condition 
generally. 

We  have  got  a  lot  of  fun  out  of  a  graphophone  which  the 
officers  of  one  of  the  other  companies  received  from  the 
States  recently,  along  with  a  lot  of  fairly  new  records.  I 
suppose  we  would  have  sneered  at  the  little  old  music 
box  had  anyone  started  it  up  back  home,  but  we  sit 
around  here  in  almost  reverent  silence  listening  to  every 
note  of  every  record  from  the  comic  monologues  to  the 
operatic  selections.     Some  of  the  best  records  are  by  the 


No  Near  Ending  383 

Bro^vTi  Brothers'  saxaphone  sextette,  which  played  in 
Chin  Chin,  you  remember.  There  are  some  good  pieces 
from  Jack  0' Lantern,  too.  I  am  sorry  that  the  barcarole 
from  Tales  of  Hoffman  isn't  in  the  canned  repertoire  but 
don't  undertake  to  send  it  to  me,  for  either  it  or  the 
machine  might  be  broken  before  it  reached  me. 

This  reminds  me  to  say,  though,  that  I  wish  you  would 

get  • ,  if  she  is  expert  enough  by  this  time,  to  typewrite 

for  me  a  copy  of  Browning's  Childe  Roland  to  the  Dark 
Tower  Came.  You  may  recall  my  admiration  for  this 
poem,  which  is,  I  think,  one  of  the  finest  ever  written.  I 
have  wished  often  for  a  copy  of  it  since  I  have  been  over 
here. 

This,  in  turn,  reminds  me,  by  some  queer  quirk,  to 
answer  an  inquiry  which  you  made  some  time  ago  as  to 
whether  your  letters  to  me  are  ever  opened  by  the  censor. 
No,  none  of  your  letters  has  ever  been  opened.  I  do  not 
believe  that  there  is  much  censoring  of  mail  from  the 
States,  except  in  cases  where  there  are  grounds  for 
suspicion. 

One  of  the  clippings  in  one  of  your  recent  letters  con- 
tained a  reprint  in  The  Evening  Sun  of  an  article  by 
Mr.  Simonds,  and  I  agree  with  his  view  that  The  great 
battle  of  the  war  is  now  being  fought  on  the  left  of  the 
Alhed  line.  I  do  not  beHeve  that  the  battle  will  be  a  Ger- 
man success.  Von  Hindenburg  is  clearly  going  to  be 
considerably  overdue  in  his  entry  into  Paris,  as  proclaimed 
by  him  for  May  i ,  but  I  do  not  believe  that  the  German 
failure  to  win  will  mean  an  early  end  of  the  war.  Judging 
from  all  that  has  happened  in  the  past  four  years  I  expect 
to  see  the  Germans  hold  on  like  grim  death  for  a  year  or 
two.  There  are  only  two  contingencies  I  know  of  which 
could  bring  the  war  to  an  abrupt  end,  in  the  only  way  it 
can  end,  and  I  have  seen  no  indication  of  either.  With- 
out being  unnecessarily  pessimistic,  it  is  only  fair  to  say 


384  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

that  I  think  the  people  of  the  United  States  have  still  to 
be  awakened  to  the  magnitude  of  the  task  before  them 
and  the  degree  of  sacrifice  that  will  be  required  of  them. 

Do  you  remember  the  little  newspaper  man  we  met 
that  day  of  the  National  Guard  review  while  we  were  on 
the  reviewing  stand  in  front  of  the  Public  Library,  Don 
Martin  by  name?  I  see  that  he  is  over  here  doing  war 
corresponding  for  The  New  York  Herald.  There  are 
articles  signed  by  him  in  the  Paris  Edition  every  day. 
It  would  be  odd  if  my  next  meeting  with  him  should  be 
over  here  somewhere. 

I  regret  to  report  that  our  small  dog  mascot  has  deserted 
us.  He  had  reached  that  stage  in  life  when  the  wanderlust 
asserts  itself,  and  we  had  had  trouble  with  him  for  some 
time  because  of  his  willingness  to  follow  every  olive  drab 
uniform  he  saw,  although  he  never  had  much  use  for  the 
French  sky  blue.  I  think  he  finally  managed  to  attach 
himself  in  spite  of  us  to  the  artillery. 

Much  love  to  Dad  and  yourself.  Quincy. 

Mills's  newspaper  friend  mentioned  in  the  letter  above, 
Mr.  Martin  of  The  Herald,  died  in  Paris  of  pneumonia  in 
the  winter  of  191 8-1 9. 


CHAPTER  XII 

Peace  of  a  War  Training  School— Climatic  Paradox  of  Sunny 
France — Inspiring  Visit  to  Domremy — Terrible  Cost  of  a 
Victory  in  Champagne. 

After  one  more  "hitch  in  the  trenches,"  a  short  one  to 
judge  from  the  dates  of  the  last  preceding  and  the  follow- 
ing letter,  Mills  was  now  detached  for  his  period  of  special 
instruction  at  the  officers'  training  school  at  Gondrecourt 
on  the  edge  of  the  Vosges  mountain  region,  and  some  sixty 
miles  to  the  west  of  Badonviller.  He  had,  in  fact,  de- 
voted nearly  all  his  spare  time  to  study  from  his  arrival  in 
France.  Besides  a  number  of  treatises  on  war  which  he 
took  with  him  from  America  he  bought  others  from  time  to 
time.  Altogether,  thirty-two  military  text-books  were 
contained  in  his  baggage  when  returned  to  his  parents 
after  his  death.  Besides  these,  there  was  a  large  amount 
of  manuscript  matter.  A  thick  batch  of  typewritten  and 
mimeographed  foolscap  sheets,  clamped  together,  is 
titled:  "First  Corps  Infantry  School;  Tactical  Section. 
This  Literature  to  be  Retained  by  Students."  It  covers 
all  sorts  of  details  of  army  organization  from  the  section 
and  platoon  up  to  the  division.  Instructions  are  given 
for  the  handhng  of  arms  and  for  tactical  manoeuvres. 
The  different  topics  are  covered  by  abstracts  of  lectures 
by  French  and  English  officers. 

This  comprehensive  document  shows  signs  of  much 
study,  being  margin-worn  and  stained  from  constant  use. 
There  are  many  notes  in  Mills's  handwriting  scattered 

2S  385 


386  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

through  the  text,  and  the  diagrams  of  section,  platoon  and 
company  movements  show  additional  lines  drawn  by  him 
as  he  worked  out  the  problems.  Further,  there  is  a  thick 
blank-book  with  many  pages  full  of  his  own  pencil  memo- 
randa of  lectures  which  he  heard.  The  books  also  contain 
marginal  notes  and  marks  emphasizing  certain  para- 
graphs. The  whole  mass  of  evidence  shows  that  he  re- 
turned to  the  painstaking  and  conscientious  methods  of 
his  years  at  the  University.  He  was  a  true  student.  He 
took  nothing  for  granted,  but  carefully  analyzed  every 
proposition  before  adding  it  to  his  store  of  knowledge. 
Several  papers  which  evidently  were  submitted  for  criti- 
cism have  written  across  them,  in  a  hand  not  his,  the 
word,  "Excellent." 

In  respect  to  his  army  school  work,  it  was  not  ambition 
that  prompted  his  laborious  efforts.  What  he  thought 
about  rank,  promotion,  has  been  seen.  It  was  his  sense  of 
the  officer's  responsibility  for  the  lives  of  his  men  that 
urged  him  on.  This  feeling  has  been  seen  in  his  letters. 
He  talked  on  the  subject  to  his  mother,  to  his  fellow  officers 
in  the  regiment.  It  was  a  conscientious  obsession  with 
him.  It  made  him  glad,  in  view  of  his  limited  training, 
that  he  only  held  the  rank  of  Second  Lieutenant.  One 
pungent  sentence  in  his  notebook  under  date  of  May  7, 
1918,  summarizes  his  conscientious  attitude: 

"The  most  promiscuous  murderer  in  the  world  is  the 
ignorant  officer." 

His  letters  now  take  up  his  experiences  during  this 
school  period. 

[First]  Army  Corps  School 
[GoNDRECouRT,  France],  May  5,  1 91 8. 

Dear  Mother:  Well,  here  I  am  back  at  school  again, 
quartered  in  a  long  wooden  shack  of  a  barrack  for  all  the 
world  like  the  one  in  which  I  began  my  Plattsburg  school- 


Beautiful  Nancy  387 

ing  just  a  year  ago,  less  one  week,  today.  It  is  hard  for  me 
to  realize  that  a  whole  year  has  passed  since  I  have  worn 
civilian  clothes. 

This  is  quite  a  different  school  opening  from  the  one  at 
Plattsburg.  Then  the  weather  was  miserably  cold  and 
rainy,  and  all  of  us  cadets  had  a  hard  time  of  it  huddling 
around  the  stoves  to  keep  our  patriotism  warm.  Today, 
the  sun  is  smiling  down  upon  France  so  brightly  that  at 
last  we  begin  to  see  how  the  land  got  its  name,  "sunny." 
In  fact,  the  weather  has  turned  so  warm  that  I  have  spent 
some  time  trying  to  buy  summer  underwear,  my  stock 
being  stored  in  my  other  trunk  back  where  we  left  our 
excess  baggage  on  moving  from  our  training  area  up  to  the 
line.  My  sleeveless  sweater  came  off  also,  for  the  sum- 
mer, I  hope,  and  I  am  luxuriating  in  a  balmy  atmosphere 
which  is  more  welcome  than  I  can  tell  you,  after  the 
months  of  cold  weather  without  adequate  heating  facilities. 

On  my  way  over  to  the  training  school,  I  spent  what 
amounted  to  a  three  day  vacation  in  one  of  the  country's 
best  known  cities  [Nancy],  which  is  still  a  pleasant  place  to 
stay  in,  in  spite  of  its  shell-damaged  condition.  Another 
'fine  hotel  next  door  to  the  one  I  stayed  at  had  been 
thoroughly  wrecked  by  Boche  aerial  bombs,  but  that 
did  not  prevent  my  reHshing  the  luxurious  experience  of 
dining  at  tables  covered  with  real  Hnen  and  sleeping  in  a 
real  bed.  I  spent  my  time  inspecting  very  attractive 
public  gardens,  beautiful  churches  and  the  ancient 
chateau  of  the  Dukes  of  Guise,  now  converted  into  a 
public  school,  in  the  gargoyles  of  which  I  was  much  in- 
terested. Those  of  Notre  Dame  will  have  to  "go  some" 
to  beat  these  in  grotesqueness. 

"I  wish  I  could  name  the  city  I  was  in,  but  the  hint 
about  the  Guise  family  should  be  sufficient.  The  censor- 
ship regulation  regarding  the  naming  of  cities  in  letters  is 
in  many  instances  unnecessary,  but  often  it  is  needful,  so 


388  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

the  rule  has  to  be  ironclad.  I  might  have  taken  a  day  or 
two  more  and  gone  to  Paris,  but  I  did  not  feel  like  doing 
the  sight-seeing  such  a  trip  would  have  forced  upon  me. 
I  was  inclined  to  loaf,  invite  my  soul  and  smoke  Bill 
Cramer's  good  cigars. 

More  again.     Much  love  to  Dad  and  yourself. 

QUINCY. 

In  his  next  letter,  Mills  indicated  that  his  company  had 
served,  before  his  order  to  school,  in  different  trenches 
from  those  of  his  earlier  experiences.  Notwithstanding 
the  change,  they  were  still  in  the  neighborhood  of  Badon- 
viller.  All  the  casualties  in  the  Second  Battalion  of  the 
middle  and  latter  part  of  April  and  early  May  are  re- 
corded as  from  that  point.  However,  he  happened  upon 
much  more  agreeable  ground  as  he  cheerfully  explains. 
He  had  previously  been  in  the  locality  designated  as 
G.  C.  12,  which  was  in  the  valley  of  a  small  stream,  and 
consequently  was  a  mudhole.  The  new  post,  G.  C.  8, 
was  not  over  a  kilometer  distant,  but  it  was  on  high  ground 
in  what  had  been  fairly  thick  woods.  From  the  point  of 
view  of  living,  the  new  region  was  preferable.  But  trees 
and  stumps  are  hard  on  the  nerves,  as  they  have  a  queer 
habit  of  seeming  alive  and  in  motion  during  the  hours  of 
darkness. 

May  8,  1918. 

Dear  Mother  :  Some  more  interesting  news  for  you. 
As  my  note  of  several  days  ago  informed  you,  I  am  at 
school,  but  before  assuming  the  student's  r61e  here  in  the 
[First]  Army  Corps  School  I  had  another  one  of  those 
practical  courses  in  the  real  school  of  war,  the  trenches. 
Do  not  think  that  I  am  minimizing  discomforts  and  dan- 
gers for  your  sake  when  I  say  that  this  last  hitch  up  front 
was  really  a  pleasure.     There  were  several  reasons  for 


Birds  Still  Gayly  Singing  389 

this,  of  which  the  fact  that  we  had  an  abnormally  quiet 
tour  of  duty  was  not  the  greatest.  From  our  rest  billet  in 
the  village  in  the  woods,  we  moved  to  a  trench  sector  also 
in  the  woods,  and  located  on  high  ground,  where  the 
trenches  were  absolutely  dry  even  in  the  rainy  weather 
which  continued  during  the  period  of  our  stay  there. 

You  remember  it  was  the  extreme  physical  discomfort 
which  I  dwelt  on  as  most  appalling  during  my  first  service 
actually  in  the  line,  when  I  had  the  luck  to  draw  a  sector 
in  which  hip  boots  were  none  too  high  for  the  depth  of  the 
mud.  This  last  time  up,  our  trenches  were  only  a  good 
throwing  distance  from  the  Boche  lines,  so  to  speak,  the 
Huns  being  located  on  opposing  high  ground  with  a 
narrow,  densely  wooded,  steep-sloped  valley  running 
between.  Not  only  did  the  upland  trenches  seem  de- 
lightful after  the  mudhole  we  had  floundered  in  previously, 
but  the  corner  of  the  battlefront  was  actually  beautiful, 
with  the  trees  that  cover  it  budding  into  leaf  in  the  first 
warm,  moist  days  of  real  spring.  Of  course  there  were 
many  shattered  tree  trunks,  but  not  nearly  as  many  as 
you  might  suppose  considering  that  the  lines  have  op- 
posed each  other  at  this  same  point  unchanged  since  about 
the  third  month  of  the  war. 

And  the  birds  chattered  and  sang  in  the  peaceful  dell 
between  the  two  armies,  going  about  their  business  of 
spring  housebuilding  just  as  if  there  were  never  any  roar 
of  artillery  to  startle  them.  Strange  indeed  sounded  the 
voice  of  a  cuckoo  that  kept  calling  continuously  through 
the  stillness  of  that  silent  battlefield. 

Oddly  enough,  the  support  position  was  the  one  of  most 
danger  in  this  sector  we  last  occupied.  We  all  lived  in 
dugouts  which  pierced  deep  into  the  reverse  slope  of  a 
hill,  so  deep  that  Fritz  couldn't  get  at  them  with  his  artil- 
lery. But  he  had  tried  hard  enough.  The  whole  land- 
scape that  I  surveyed  from  the  doorway  of  my  dugout  had 


390  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

been  trimmed  according  to  the  best  Kultural  standards  of 
landscape  gardening.  Not  a  tree  in  our  front  yard  but 
had  been  hit  by  a  shell,  and  beyond  the  road  running 
along  in  front  of  our  cave  dwellings  extended  a  forest  of 
topless  trees,  many  trunks  standing  askew,  some  of  them 
roots  up  where  they  had  been  hurled  out  of  shell  holes  of 
all  sizes,  running  up  to  basins  twenty  feet  across  and  deep 
enough  to  go  swimming  in.  The  "strafing"  of  this  bit  of 
woods  must  certainly  have  cost  the  Kaiser  a  pile  of  marks 
in  the  last  four  years. 

The  road  I  spoke  of  was  a  favorite  spot  for  Fritz  to  fling 
over  a  flock  of  shrapnel  shells,  "flying  pigs,"  every  now 
and  then  on  the  chance  of  catching  some  unwary  poilus  or 
Yanks,  and  I  assure  you  that  "No  Loafing"  signs  were 
not  necessary  along  tha t  highway.  The  men — and  officers 
— stuck  pretty  close  around  the  doors  of  the  dugouts,  and 
whenever  the  first  sound  came  like  a  whole  hardware 
store  flying  through  the  air  it  was  a  sight  to  see  the  dive 
for  the  doorways.  If  the  volley  hit  close,  the  men  would 
curse  Fritz  fit  to  make  your  hair  stand  on  end  for  trying 
to  kill  them,  and  if  it  went  wild  they  cursed  him  for  his 
poor  marksmanship.     Either  way  he  got  cursed  to  a  finish. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  we  were  bothered  very  little  by 
such  visitations  during  our  stay .  Every  indication  pointed 
to  the  Boche's  leaving  very  few  troops  on  our  end  of  the 
line  in  concentrating  for  the  great  drive  in  the  west.  The 
raids  pulled  by  the  enemy  at  various  points  at  this  end  of 
the  line  seem  to  have  been  made  by  a  comparatively  few 
shock  troops  especially  picked  and  transported  from  point 
to  point  for  this  purpose,  with  a  view  to  making  the  Allies 
keep  as  many  troops  as  possible  here.  The  * '  flying  circus 
we  have  nicknamed  this  special  detachment  of  Huns,  and 
our  men  sat  around  all  the  time  we  were  up,  polishing  their 
guns  and  automatic  rifles  and  just  naturally  praying  that 
it  would  ' '  put  on  a  show ' '  for  them. 


Elaborate  Dugouts  39i 

"Lieutenant,"  said  one  of  my  automatic  gunners  to  me, 

"if  that circus  gets  fresh  with  us 

there  won't  be  enough  of  it  left  to  make  a  side  show!" 

He  was  just  about  right,  too,  for  our  positions  were  as 
pretty  as  I  ever  expect  to  hold.  Manned  as  we  had 
them,  they  would  be  impregnable  against  even  overwhelm- 
ing numbers  without  long  and  concentrated  artillery 
preparation,  which  would  allow  plenty  of  time  for  bring- 
ing up  sufficient  troops  to  stop  even  a  drive  of  the  mag- 
nitude to  justify  such  artillery  preparation.  I  would 
consider  myself  lucky  to  receive  an  attack  in  such  a  po- 
sition, located  in  the  foothills  of  the  mountains,  and 
constituting  in  itself  a  little  Verdun. 

I  wish  I  could  send  you  a  picture  of  the  dugouts  in 
which  we  lived.  In  addition  to  being  highly  admirable 
from  a  utilitarian  standpoint  when  something  consider- 
ably harder  than  raindrops  is  falling,  their  exteriors,  in  so 
far  as  they  have  exteriors,  are  admirable  in  point  of  archi- 
tectural construction.  And  their  front  yards  had  been 
fenced  in  with  little  rustic  fences  restraining  walks  that 
wind  through  miniature  gardens  out  to  the  road.  There 
are  flower  beds  in  which  flowers  are  actually  blossoming 
around  artistic  centerpieces  worked  out  with  Boche  shells 
which  failed  to  "strafe"  when  they  came  over.  Un- 
doubtedly the  flowers  were  formerly  sown  in  patterns  by 
the  poilus,  but,  now  that  we  have  relieved  them,  the 
flowers  are  springing  this  season  from  the  seeds  of  those 
that  withered  last  Fall. 

I  must  not  forget  to  mention  the  flock  of  cats  that  in- 
habit the  underground  village,  and  wax  fat  and  fatter  on 
the  scraps  from  the  kitchens.  There  was  one  half-grown 
gray  Tommy  that  thought  my  cot  just  about  the  best  place 
he  had  ever  struck  to  nap  on.  These  cats  we  found  quite 
tame,  as  if  they  had  been  petted  by  all  our  predecessors. 
They  must  know  what  the  klaxon  gas  warning  means  and 


392  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

streak  out  for  the  gas-proof  dugouts  when  it  sounds; 
otherwise  it  seems  to  me  they  would  have  been  "out of 
luck  "  before  this.  Unless  a  shell  came  mighty  close  these 
cats  paid  it  no  heed  whatever. 

The  men  got  lots  of  fun  out  of  their  cave  dwellings, 
posting  signs  at  their  doors  christening  them  after  this 
fashion :"  Wiggle  Inn  "  ( strongly  connotative  of ' '  cooties ' ' ) , 
"Stagger  Inn,"  etc.  One  of  the  new  men  who  have  come 
to  us  recently  was  frank  enough  to  write  home  that  ' '  this 
is  not  a  very  wild  sector,  but  it's  plenty  wild  enough  for 
me."  They  all  stood  their  first  experience  well,  though. 
They  are  a  very  good  bunch  from  pretty  nearly  all  over 
the  U.  S.,  and  I  am  glad  to  see  the  N.  G.  enlisted  men 
recognize  them  as  such. 

I  left  the  trenches  just  a  little  ahead  of  the  company  in 
order  to  come  to  school.  Just  before  leaving  I  received 
your  first  letter  of  April  in  which  you  spoke  of  the  proba- 
bility of  your  going  South.  I  suppose  the  next  letter  will 
be  from  Statesville.  I  am  sorry  to  hear  of  the  state  of 
Aunt  Sallie's  health  but  at  her  advanced  age  there  was 
nothing  else  to  be  expected.  I  will  try  to  number  my 
letters  consecutively  again  now  that  I  seem  to  be  settled 
for  a  while.  While  on  the  move,  it  was  impossible  to 
keep  track  of  all  the  letters  I  sent  or  received.  One  of  the 
men  wrote  home  that  he  had  the  Wandering  Jew  and  the 
rolling  stone  both  beaten  for  perpetual  motion,  and  he  was 
about  right.  I  received  the  package  of  pictorial  sections, 
including  the  Life,  and  was  glad  to  get  them  all.  Lieuten- 
ant Nelson  told  me  to  tell  you  that  the  Life  picture  about 
the  soldier  and  his  box  of  candy  hit  me  just  exactly  right, 
and  also  that  you  sent  just  the  kind  of  candy  he  likes  best. 
It  certainly  was  good. 

I  am  glad  to  know  that  you  are  investing  my  allotment 
money  in  Liberty  Bonds,  but  I  do  not  want  you  to  invest 
it  all  that  way.     Spend  some  of  it  for  things  you  want, 


Trench  Souvenirs  393 

whether  you  need  them  or  not.  If  I  get  back  O.  K.,  as  I 
expect  to,  I  won't  need  the  money,  and  if  I  don't  get  back 
I  won't  need  it,  so  I  can't  lose.  If  you  are  South  I  suppose 
Sweet  is  appreciating  the  significance  of  the  saying:  "As 
big  as  all  outdoors."     I  would  like  to  have  seen  him  the 

first  time  he  was  turned  loose  in  that  big  yard  at 's. 

Whether  you  are  there  or  not,  be  sure  to  remember  me  to 
them  all.  I  will  write  you  something  of  the  school  later. 
Much  love  to  Dad  and  yourself.  Quincy. 

[First]  Army  Corps  School,  May  12,  1918. 

Dear  Dad:  I  am  sending  you  a  box  that  hasn't  any- 
thing of  value  in  it,  its  principal  contents  being  two  of  my 
old  hats.  We  cannot  wear  the  hats  over  here,  as  they  have 
been  replaced  for  service  by  the  small  cap,  cut  on  the 
French  model.  The  caps  were  adopted  particularly  be- 
cause they  can  be  worn  under  the  helmet,  and  will  keep 
the  head  warm  in  cold  weather.  I  might  just  as  well 
have  thrown  the  hats  away,  I  suppose,  but  I  thought  you 
and  Mother  might  like  to  have  them.  And,  then,  too,  the 
Stetson  was  the  first  hat  I  wore  in  the  army,  and  the  other 
one  I  wore  at  Plattsburg,  so  both  have  certain  associations 
because  of  which  I  would  like  to  have  them  for  the  future. 
Both  can  be  reblocked  and  made  fit  to  wear.  When  I  put 
on  cits'  clothes  again  I  will  probably  retain  the  Stetson 
part  of  my  uniform  until  it  is  pas  bofi,  as  the  French  say, 
and  I  have  to  buy  new  headgear. 

The  two  bits  of  wood  are  pieces  of  a  stick  that  I  carried 
while  in  the  trenches.  The  mud  on  them  is  real  trench 
mud,  so  don't  clean  it  off.  I  thought  you  might  appreciate 
them  as  souvenirs  more  than  something  that  might  cost 
a  lot  of  money. 

I  congratulate  you  on  being  in  uniform  also,  and  I  am 
quite  certain  that  if  the  Home  Guard  has  to  "croak"  any 
Fritzes,  nobody  will  enjoy  the  croaking  any  more  than  you. 


394  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

The  school  work  is  progressing  very  well.  It  is  much 
the  same  as  the  Plattsburg  routine,  except  that  we  are 
learning  the  new  dope  that  has  come  out  since  then.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  a  sort  of  rest  camp  for  me,  in  spite  of 
the  fact  that  we  are  kept  on  the  jump  all  the  time,  for  I 
had  been  up  where  "we  have  a  4th  of  July  celebration 
every  day,"  as  the  men  put  it  in  writing  home,  so  long 
that  it's  a  relief  to  be  where  things  are  quiet. 

At  the  present  writing  the  German  drive  is  still  causing 
no  great  concern  over  here.  There  is  no  doubt  that  it 
will  beat  itself  out  for  nothing  proportionate  to  the  cost  in 
German  lives.  The  spirit  of  the  French  and  British,  both, 
is  fine,  and  I  can  see  nothing  in  the  situation  to  cause  the 
Berlin  crowd  any  joy.  Sooner  or  later  they  will  get  the 
gate,  and  the  harder  they  make  the  Allies'  job,  the  harder 
the  terms  of  peace  will  be  for  them.  I  hope  that  this  finds 
both  you  and  Mother  well.     Much  love. 

QUINCY. 

May  15,  1918. 

Dear  Mother  :  Just  look  who's  here  in  the  two  photo- 
graphs inclosed.  I  had  them  taken  for  a  joke,  and  they 
are — on  me.  You  will  note  how  slouchy  I  became  lying 
around  the  trenches.  I  lost  many  pounds  in  weight,  also. 
The  drill  here  has  done  much  already  to  restore  my  set-up. 

This  Red  Cross  envelope  I  inclose  may  furnish  you  with 
some  clue  as  to  where  I  spent  my  three  days'  holidays  on 
the  way  to  the  ist  Army  Corps  School  at  this  place.  The 
cards  I  have  written  to  you  on  I  consider  among  the  best 
battlescapes  I  have  seen. 

I  received  the  box  of  candy  and  tobacco  from  Elvy 
yesterday.  The  fudge  and  mints  were  marvelously  fresh 
— and  so  good. 

Love  to  Dad  and  yourself.  Quincy. 


Weather  Perversity  395 

The  city  in  which  he  spent  the  hoHday  was,  as  noted 
already,  Nancy,  one  of  the  most  beautiful  places  in  France, 
full  of  history  and  tradition.  He  sent  home  a  book  of 
views  of  its  most  striking  features. 

May  19,  1918. 

Dear  Mother  :  Had  not  the  weather  turned  over  a  new 
leaf  and  given  us  the  last  two  glorious,  sunny  days  I  would 
have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  Hartman,  my  striker, 
had  just  about  sized  the  thing  up  right  when  he  said, 
' '  They  do  everything  backward  in  France. ' '  It  had  rained 
every  day  previously  since  my  arrival  at  school,  and, 
considering  the  preceding  weeks  of  rain,  regarding  which  I 
have  already  written  you,  I  was  beginning  to  cherish  the 
suspicion  that  the  name,  "Sunny  France,"  had  been  be- 
stowed in  a  more  or  less  Pickwickian  sense.  Hartman 
doesn't  think  any  better  of  the  British,  for  he  delivered 
the  verdict  on  them  that  "they  make  everything  square." 
This  unfavorable  observation  was  prompted  by  the 
English  army  shoes,  a  number  of  which  were  issued  to  our 
men.  He  got  a  pair,  and  their  square  toes,  heels  and 
counters  hurt  his  feet. 

Much  to  my  regret  I  haven't  Hartman  here  with  me. 
While  I  am  with  the  company  he,  in  his  capacity  of 
striker  or  orderly,  keeps  my  boots  cleaned,  oiled  and 
polished,  and  cleans  up  my  quarters — when  we  officers 
have  any  quarters,  which  is  not  often  when  we  are  in  the 
field. 

This  mud  here  is  altogether  the  stiff  est,  most  tenacious 
I  have  ever  struck.  The  South  Boston  mud  you  are  al- 
ways reminiscing  about  isn't  a  circumstance  in  compari- 
son. Consequently  I  have  had  to  do  a  lot  of  cleaning  up, 
as  we  are  required  to  keep  as  neat  as  possible.  The  change 
from  the  front  line  is  a  sort  of  vacation,  as  I  wrote  you 
before,  but  the  course  leaves  hardly  any  time  between 


39^  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

7  A.M.  and  9  p.m.  daily,  and  I  am  not  going  to  attempt  to 
write  long  letters  while  here,  as  I  want  to  devote  all  my 
energy  to  getting  all  I  can  out  of  the  course.  I  know  you 
will  understand  and  approve. 

I  had  more  time  for  writing  while  up  front  than  I  have 
had  anywhere  else  in  the  army.  It  is  a  curious  fact  that 
because  of  the  easy  time  they  have  while  in  the  trenches 
the  men  prefer  being  right  in  the  front  line  to  the  support 
and  reserve  positions,  where  they  are  worked  incessantly 
on  carrying  parties. 

Love  to  Dad  and  yourself.  Quincy. 


May  22,  1918. 

Dear  Mother  :  All  at  once  the  lilacs  are  in  bloom.  Their 
purple  splendor  reminds  me  of  the  bowers  in  Central 
Park.  But  I  have  never  seen  anywhere  else  anything  like 
the  golden  carpet  of  dandelions  and  buttercups  which 
stretches  here  over  the  rolling  hills  of  France.  I  inclose 
a  wild  flower  of  a  sort  I  had  never  seen  before.  It  appears 
to  belong  to  the  tulip  family. 

Your  reference  to  the  suggestion  from  someone  in  au- 
thority that  too  many  letters  are  being  sent  to  the  men 
over  here  prompts  me  to  say  that  any  restriction  would 
be  a  great  mistake.  If  the  men's  communication  with 
home  and  friends  is  at  all  limited,  they  will  be  dissatisfied, 
and  dissatisfaction  and  good  morale  do  not  go  together  in 
an  army. 

The  news  of  the  crash  in  the  price  of  eggs  in  New  York 
reminds  me  to  tell  you  that  eggs  we  have  been  able  to  get 
in  the  greatest  plenty  in  France.  I  am  heartily  tired  of 
them.  We  have  to  pay  from  3^  to  6  francs,  usually 
about  4^,  per  dozen  for  them.  Fresh  milk  and  butter 
are  scarce  because  all  the  dairies  are  drained  for  the  cheese 
foundries,  which  seem  to  be  the  greatest  national  vice. 


Wild  Flowers  397 

Summer  is  here  in  full  blast,  and  the  sun  is  blazing  hot. 
All  of  us  students  have  that  tired  feeling  to  beat  the  band. 
Love  to  Dad  and  yourself. 

QUINCY. 

May  26,  1918. 

Dear  Mother:  Here  are  several  flowers  that  I  col- 
lected while  on  a  manoeuvre  yesterday  and  stuck  into  my 
gas  mask  pouch.  I  don't  know  whether  you  will  be  able 
to  make  much  out  of  them,  but  they  interested  me  as  being 
different  from  the  wild  flowers  I  am  familiar  with  back 
home. 

You  can  imagine  what  a  beautiful  effect  the  red 
splotches  of  the  poppies  make  in  fields  yellow  and  white 
with  asters  and  Queen  Anne's  lace  and  starred  with  the 
old  reliable  daisies.  The  yellow  clusters  inclosed  grow  on 
small  trees,  which  are  literally  festooned  with  them, 
transforming  whole  hillsides  into  bowers.  The  wild 
asters,  purple  and  yellow,  which  I  send,  are  as  large  as 
some  of  the  smaller  garden  varieties  in  the  States.  It 
seems  to  me  that  the  flowers  in  the  fields  are  more  luxuriant 
and  more  beautiful  than  I  have  ever  seen  them  before. 

There  are  many  sheep  in  this  section,  and  it  is  not  at  all 
unusual  to  see  a  big  fiock  of  them,  guarded  by  an  old  man 
or  a  girl,  aided  always  by  a  faithful  and  voluble  dog, 
browsing  across  one  of  these  long,  rolling  hillsides,  a  regu- 
lar Mauve  landscape  by  the  still  greater  master.  Nature. 
And  over  such  fields  the  clouds  float  in  regular  Maxfield 
Parrish  skies.  At  last  it  is  really  "Sunny  France."  I 
understand  better  even  than  I  did  last  winter  why  it  is 
the  painters'  paradise.  Quincy. 

May  29,  1918. 

Dear  Mother:  The  inclosure.  Souvenir  de  Domremy, 
explains  itself.     Having   the   opportunity   to   visit   the 


398  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

immortal  Joan's  birthplace,  naturally  I  did  not  miss  it. 
The  day  was  one  of  the  most  delightful  I  ever  spent. 
Domremy  impresses  you  as  being  today  exactly  as  it. was 
when  The  Maid  tended  her  sheep  on  the  slopes  overlooking 
it,  a  quaint  village  almost  wholly  without  modern  marks 
and  almost  exactly  like  the  rest  of  the  hamlets  which  dot 
the  valleys  and  sometimes  the  hilltops  of  France.  Not 
only  are  there  no  hotels  there  for  the  accommodation  of 
tourists,  a  thing  which  surprised  me  greatly,  but  I  even 
had  to  walk  a  kilometer  to  a  neighboring  town  to  get  lunch. 

Joan's  home  and  the  ancient  church  in  which  she  was 
baptized  are  the  most  interesting  places  in  Domremy,  of 
course,  because  of  their  antiquity,  but  the  church  which 
has  been  raised  to  her  on  the  site  where  she  heard  the 
voices  bid  her  take  up  the  sword  for  France  is  more  than 
worth  a  pilgrimage  such  as  I  took  to  see  it.  It  contains 
the  finest  mural  paintings  I  have  ever  seen.  They  depict 
six  scenes  in  the  short  eventful  period  of  Joan's  life.  In 
coloring,  particularly,  they  are  marvelous. 

Speaking  of  the  pilgrimage  to  Domremy,  another 
Lieutenant  and  myself  set  out  to  make  it  on  foot,  a  pretty 
long  hike,  but  we  were  lucky  enough  to  catch  trucks  both 
ways.  And  in  one  of  the  trucks  I  found  members  of  a 
hospital  unit  who  informed  me  that  the  division  in  which 
I  should  have  been  had  I  not  been  transferred  is  now  all 
over  here.  So  all  of  my  friends  are  here  now.  I  wonder 
very  much  what  kind  of  troops  they  are.  I  am  sending 
you  herewith  some  buttons  from  the  uniform  which  I  wore 
every  day  from  my  arrival  in  France  up  to  my  arrival 
here.  While  I  am  here,  I  am  dressing  up  daily  after  the 
work  is  done,  and  I  surely  do  enjoy  getting  into  good 
clothes  and  swinging  a  cane.  Incidentally,  I  am  wearing 
for  work  now  the  same  khaki  uniform  which  I  wore  at  the 
three  Plattsburg  camps  I  attended.  It  is  rendering 
yeoman's  service. 


Spirit  of  Joan  of  Arc  399 

The  resumption  of  German  activity  is  surprising  only  in 
its  tardiness  in  starting;  the  Huns  do  not  usually  permit 
such  lulls  when  they  once  start  an  offensive.  Love  to 
Dad  and  yourself. 

QUINCY. 

P.  S.  The  bit  of  honeysuckle  inclosed  I  picked  in  the 
yard  of  the  house  where  Jeanne  d'Arc  was  born.  It 
grows  in  as  great  profusion  there  as  around  our  old  place 
at  home. 

QUINCY. 

He  also  sent  home  a  book  of  views  in  and  about  Dom- 
remy,  showing  many  of  the  places  mentioned  in  his  letter, 
as  well  as  relics  of  The  Maid  and  art  memorials  in  her 
honor.  Further,  he  wrote  on  an  illustrated  card,  showing 
Joan's  birthplace,  to  Mrs.  Morris,  already  mentioned.  He 
spoke  of  his  visit  and  went  on  to  say  all  Americans  going 
to  Europe  should  make  the  pilgrimage.  He  added: 
"The  spirit  of  the  French  today  is  that  of  Joan  of  Arc. 
It  was  a  most  delightful  day.  ...  It  is  a  gloriously 
beautiful  country  at  this  season." 

June  2,  1918. 

Dear  Mother:  You  may  have  thought  I  had  a  lean 
and  hungry  look  in  the  last  two  pictures  I  sent  home  along 
with  the  sections  of  my  trench  stick.  I  was  thinned  down 
by  the  service,  but  if  you  thought  I  was  thin  you  just 
ought  to  have  seen  the  Captain  before  he  left  us,  or 
Lieutenant  Younkin  when  I  left  the  company.  Their 
clothes  hung  on  them  like  bags,  as  did  Captain  Casey's;  I 
know  you  remember  him.  You  will  be  relieved  to  learn 
that  I  am  fattening  up  again  with  the  good  chow  here. 

Our  fare  is  really  sumptuous;  much  better  than  you 
folks  are  having  back  in  the  States,  I'm  sure.     We  always 


400  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

have  butter  and  plenty  of  white  bread,  biscuits,  pie  and 
cake — and  doughnuts.  It  is  nothing  unusual  for  us  to 
have  steak  and  potatoes,  peas,  corn,  fried  carrots,  radishes 
and  pickles  and  dessert  at  a  meal.  Oatmeal  and  hot 
cakes  are  alternated  at  breakfast.  The  coffee  is  always 
good.  So  you  see  we  are  in  pretty  fine  luck.  Also,  we 
have  purchased  the  makins' — the  men  at  my  table,  I 
mean — and  hired  a  cook  to  make  up  for  us  batches  of  pies 
and  doughnuts  for  midnight  lunches. 

In  addition  to  the  excellent  fare,  the  work  has  continued 
to  be  a  pipe.  And  I  have  had  the  pleasure  of  getting  ac- 
quainted with  officers  from  all  over  the  United  States. 
In  fact,  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  insufficient  stress  is 
laid  on  the  fact  that  this  is  a  school  and  not  a  vacation 
centre.  I  have  learned  a  good  deal,  but  I  will  undertake 
to  learn  more  and  have  just  as  good  a  time  in  any  week 
under  proper  conditions  and  competent  instructors. 
Speaking  of  other  officers,  I  have  met  here  the  only  other 
man,  with  the  exception  of  Quincy  Sharpe,  who  has  the 
same  name  as  mine.  He  is  Quincy  C.  Ayres,  of  Missis- 
sippi, and  is  a  2nd  Lieutenant  of  Engineers.  Many  of 
the  men  at  this  school  have  not  been  up  front,  and  the 
respect  in  which  they  hold  us  veterans  is  amusing.  We, 
of  course,  vie  with  each  other  in  preparing  them  for  the 
worst. 

I  inclose  a  card  picture  of  the  church  erected  in  honor  of 
Joan  of  Arc.  How  the  Huns  would  delight  in  destroying 
such  an  edifice!  The  progress  they  have  made  in  recent 
days  makes  you  feel  that  something  is  wrong  that  such  a 
power  of  destruction  should  be  suffered  to  go  so  far.  But 
there  will  be  a  reckoning  in  time. 

The  order  inclosed  may  interest  you.  It  was  my  first 
order  to  go  into  the  trenches.     Do  not  show  it  to  everyone. 

Much  love  to  Dad  and  yourself. 

Quincy. 


Order  to  the  Trenches  401 

The  order  enclosed  in  this  letter  read  as  follows : 

U.  S.  Army  Field  Message 
From  P.  C. 

At  P.  A.  Malgrejean. 

Date:  3  April,  191 8.     Hour:  9:50  a.m. 

To  Lieut.  Mills. 

The  4th  platoon  under  your  command  will  relieve  Lt. 
Pearsall,  G.C.  12,  today;  relief  commencing  at  3  p.m.  and  being 
completed  by  4  p.m.,  in  small  groups  of  not  over  6  men.  See 
that  all  men  have  220  rounds  of  ammunition.     You  will  not 

take  over men  with  you.     See  that  Sgt.  Osier  is  advised 

so  he  can  reaiTange  chow  details.  Younkin. 

This  refers  evidently  to  the  tour  of  duty  described  in  the 
last  chapter  in  the  letters  of  April  6  and  9.  That  experi- 
ence, it  appears,  was  Mills's  first  of  actual  personal  duty 
in  the  trenches.  When  he  was  at  the  front  in  February, 
as  is  shown  by  his  letter  of  March  15  to  Mr.  Luby,  he  was 
assigned  to  the  battalion  staff,  and,  while  under  constant 
artillery  fire,  he  did  not  serve  in  the  very  front  lines. 

From  Lt.  Mills;  At  ist  Army  Corps  School. 

Date:  June  9,  1918;  Hour:  10  a.m. 
To:  His  Mother;    How  sent:  By  U.  S.  Mail. 

Here's  the  regulation  field  message  heading  form,  which 
I  know  will  interest  you. 

I  am  in  receipt  of  your  letters  up  to  May  18,  and  am 
glad  to  know  that  you  have  made  the  S  latesville  visit.  All 
the  home  news  interests  me  greatly. 

If  you  have  returned  to  New  York  I  judge  that  you  are 
having  some  more  interesting  experiences  there.  The 
only  thing  that  surprises  me  about  the  U-boat  raid  off  the 
coast  is  that  it  was  so  long  in  coming.  The  German  threat 
to  bomb  New  York  City  has  been  duly  noticed  here,  and 
while  it  sounds  bombastic  I  would  not  be  surprised  if  the 
Huns  found  a  way  to  carry  out  the  threat.  If  they  do 
26 


402  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

the  only  result  will  be  to  make  the  Americans  really  mad, 
just  as  the  air  raids  on  England  affected  the  British.  It 
must  be  strange  for  New  York  to  be  dimming  its  lights  for 
war.  Certainly  if  the  Huns  can  reach  so  far  we  should 
be  able  to  find  a  way  to  knock  the  roof  off  of  Berlin. 

In  regard  to  the  Lorraine  cross,  I  can  give  you  no  in- 
formation as  to  the  reason  for  its  double  design,  but  the 
thistle  is  an  emblem  of  Lorraine  as  well  as  of  Scotland. 

Don't  feel  badly  about  not  being  able  to  send  me  pack- 
ages: I'd  prefer  the  ship  space  to  be  taken  up  with  muni- 
tions to  be  used  in  blowing  the  Boche  to  hell.  Thanks 
for  the  clippings,  and  for  the  quotation  regarding  the 
presence  of  Bulgarians  and  Turks  on  our  front.  But  there 
were  no  Bulgarians  and  Turks  opposite  us.  That  was 
just  "dope,"  of  which  the  supply  is  always  abundant  in 
the  army.  We  know  always  who  is  opposite  us  because 
there  are  always  Germans  in  ones  and  twos  and  twenties 
sneaking  over  and  giving  themselves  up.  That  they  are 
doing  so  is  one  of  the  most  encouraging  signs  of  the  war. 
They  report  that,  while  their  officers  claim  to  believe  that 
Germany  will  win  the  war,  the  men  in  the  ranks  have  no 
such  faith,  and  also  that,  while  the  officers  live  pretty  well, 
the  fare  of  the  common  soldier  is  rotten.  They  say  that 
if  the  Americans  were  not  so  keen  to  shoot  at  every  Hun 
they  get  a  glimpse  of  many  more  Germans  would  give 
themselves  up.  They  report,  too,  that  they  are  told  by 
their  officers  that  the  American  troops  are  poor  soldiers, 
but  that  they  have  found  out  from  personal  experience 
their  officers  are  liars. 

We  get  the  news  from  the  front  here,  and  have  just 
heard  of  an  attempted  raid  on  my  regimental  sector  in 
which  the  Huns  lost  more  than  twenty  dead  and  six 
prisoners,  and  got  no  prisoners  themselves.  Our  loss: 
one  man  killed.  The  prisoners  said  that  the  German 
raiding  party  had  to  be  tirged  out  of  its  own  trenches  at 


Gas  Casualties  4^3 

the  point  of  the  bayonet.  They  say  that  the  truth  as  to 
the  real  fighting  quaUty  of  the  American  soldier  is  now 
well  known  to  the  German  private,  and  that  the  knowledge 
that  there  are  10,000,000  plus  to  come  over  has  had  a 
great  effect  on  the  German  army's  state  of  mind. 

Taking  our  regiment  as  an  example,  some  six  raids 
attempted  against  us  have  not  netted  a  prisoner  for  the 
Huns,  who  have  lost  instead  more  than  200  dead,  not  to 
mention  several  prisoners  and  their  wounded.  We  were 
told  in  the  course  of  a  lecture  yesterday  that  a  German 
sergeant  had  presented  himself  in  the  i68th's  lines  several 
days  ago  announcing  himself  as  an  American  prisoner, 
and  warning  of  an  impending  gas  attack.  Thanks  to  this 
warning,  the  attack  caused  a  minimum  of  losses,  and  the 
Huns  were  chewed  up  savagely  when  they  tried  to  raid 
afterward. 

Regarding  your  inquiry  as  to  my  personal  experience 
with  gas:  I  had  two  very  slight  touches,  one  when  some 
gas  drifted  in  from  a  salvo  of  gas  shells  thrown  on  a 
neighboring  battery,  and  one  when  I  helped  load  into  an 
ambulance  some  artillery  men  who  had  been  gassed  and 
whom  we  wanted  to  get  out  of  town  before  a  bombard- 
ment, which  didn't  materialize  after  all.  After  the  am- 
bulance left  I  found  that  I  had  got  a  sHght  dose  from  the 
clothing  of  the  men  we  handled.  As  they  tell  us  here  at 
school :  ' '  Gas  continues  to  be  the  most  deadly  weapon  of 
the  war  because  men  will  persist  in  being  damn  fools." 
More  than  95  per  cent  of  the  gas  casualties  ate  due  to 
carelessness.  You  may  be  sure  that  gas  will  never  get  me 
for  that  reason.  I  have  learned  a  good  deal  about  gas 
here,  too,  and  I  expect  to  be  able  to  safeguard  my  men  by 
my  knowledge. 

I  think  the  snapshots  of  Dad  very  poor,  but  am  glad  to 
have  them.  He  favored  me  with  an  epistolary  war  dance 
of  joy  over  the  fashion  in  which  several  communities  near 


404  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

New  York  have  shut  down  on  German  and  Hearst  papers 
— the  same  thing — and  I  join  him  heartily  in  the 
celebration. 

I  inclose  a  photograph  I  had  taken  in  Toul,  where  I 
spent  a  Decoration  Day  holiday,  meeting  there  a  mem- 
ber of  my  old  Plattsburg  company,  and  having  a  most 
enjoyable  time.  Toul  is  a  small  city,  but  one  of  the 
prettiest  places  I  have  been  in  in  France.  This  post  card 
picture  I  had  taken  in  Toul  was  made  in  a  little  shop  just 
opposite  the  cathedral,  which  is  beautiful.  It  is  the  finest 
piece  of  architecture,  as  to  exterior,  that  I  have  seen,  but 
its  interior  is  less  pleasing  than  that  of  the  Winchester, 
England,  cathedral. 

The  inclosed  card  from  Mme.  Delanne  indicates  her 
address.  Censorship  is  essential  to  prevent  information 
of  immediate  movements  of  troops,  but  I  do  not  see  what 
possible  help  it  could  be  to  the  Huns  to  know  that  I  re- 
sided at  that  old  inn  some  months  ago.  I  am  sending 
you  also  a  card  marked  "A  Review  in  the  Ruins  of  Bac- 
carat." The  last  photograph  I  sent  you  was  taken  in  a 
small  gallery  in  these  ruins,  which  resulted,  by  the  way, 
not  from  bombardment  but  from  the  application  of  the 
Hun  torch  while  the  city  was  temporarily  in  the  enemy's 
hands.  From  this  card  you  will  see  that  many  sorts  of 
soldiers  took  part  in  the  review  in  the  ruins. 

My  regards  to  all  the  folks  and  friends,  and  much  love 
to  Dad  and  yourself. 

QUINCY. 

June  12,  1918. 

Dear  Mother:  Many  times  since  I  have  been  at 
school  I  have  wondered  how  it  was  that  the  British  ever 
got  their  reputation  for  lack  of  a  sense  of  humor.  The 
bright  and  shining  lights  of  a  course  which  is  more 
motononous  than  it  should  be  have  been  the  hours  in  the 


British  Humor  405 

lecture  room  listening  to  Col.  H and  Captain  S- 


assigned  from  the  British  army  to  our  teaching  staff. 
Every  man  in  school  looks  forward  with  genuine  pleasure 
to  the  talks  by  these  men,  who  keep  the  Hsteners  chuck- 
ling all  the  time,  and  yet  teach  them  more,  almost,  than 
do  all  the  rest  of  the  instructors  put  together.  The  fun  in 
these  men  is  so  irrepressible  that  it  bubbles  over  all  the 
time.  I  am  much  more  an  admirer  of  the  British  character 
after  knowing  them  than  I  ever  thought  I  would  be. 

We  have  got  equal  diversion  out  of  a  sergeant-major 
from  the  famous  Guards  Division  who  drills  us  in  close 
order,  torpedoing  every  H  right  out  of  its  proper  position 
in  the  language  to  one  where  it  doesn't  belong,  in  giving  his 
commands.  He  is  one  of  the  best  drill  masters,  the  best 
in  fact,  I  ever  drilled  under.  I  only  wish  I  were  half  as 
good.  These  British  non-commissioned  officers  are  more 
of  the  non-humorous  sort  of  British,  though;  I  think  it 
must  have  been  from  the  characteristics  of  the  middle 
class  which  they  represent  that  the  race  got  the  reputation 
for  not  being  able  to  see  a  joke.  You  have  to  be  on  your 
dignity  much  more  with  the  non-com  than  with  the  British 
officer.  They  exact  dignity  from  an  officer  in  a  way 
which  the  American  soldier  would  do  well  to  copy.  Such 
an  attitude  means  more  to  morale  in  an  army  than  can  be 
expressed  in  words. 

Nor  is  there  any  injury  done  to  our  greatly  over- 
worshiped  ' '  democracy ' '  in  the  British  non-com's  attitude. 
In  fact,  I  incline  to  the  belief  that  the  British  people  are 
more  truly  democratic  than  ours;  their  government  is 
certainly  no  less  democratic — the  crown  is  such  an  empty 
form  that  it  may  correctly  be  described  as  powerless — 
and  is  assuredly  far  more  responsible.  Indeed,  could  the 
common  or  garden  variety  of  American  comprehend  how 
fully  dictatorial  his  government  has  been  as  to  how  and 
when  the  U.  S.  should  make  this  war,  he  would  stand 


4o6  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

aghast  at  his  country's  being  called  either  democratic  or 
republican. 

Very  much  the  same  sort  of  morale  I  speak  of  in  the 
British  army  is  notable  also  in  the  French.  And  in  my 
opinion  representative  government  is  more  successful  in 
this  country  than  in  ours  for  the  reason  that  grim  necessity, 
in  the  shape  of  a  constantly  menacing  Germany,  has  made 
the  French  people  think  and  realize  that  central  authority 
has  been  essential  to  the  survival  of  the  nation.  As 
great  as  the  cost  of  this  war  must  be  in  men  and  money  I 
do  not  believe  that  the  price  will  be  too  high  if  it  only 
starts  the  American  people  thinking,  and  puts  an  end  to 
their  swallowing  of  eternal  flattery  from  a  horde  of  poli- 
ticians who  are  worse  as  rulers  than  any  royal  family 
could  be,  because  they  are  in  the  jobs  only  for  what  they 
can  get  out  of  them  in  the  present,  and  have  not  even  the 
incentive  of  building  the  government  more  strongly  for 
what  they  can  get  out  of  it  in  the  future. 

I  am  sending  you  a  booklet  of  views  which  I  do  not 
think  the  censor  could  object  to  as  the  Boche  know  as 
well  as  we  do  what  they  have  done  to  the  city  in  question. 
Hope  it  reaches  you.     Much  love  to  Dad  and  yourself. 

QUINCY. 

P.  S. :    Some  more  flowers ;  they  get  prettier  all  the  time. 

June  15,  1918. 

Dear  Mother:  School,  like  everything  else,  comes  to 
an  end,  so  I  am  on  my  way  back  to  Company  G.  I  hate 
to  leave  the  quaint  old  stone- walled  gardens  of  this  town, 
into  which  the  warm  sun  has  coaxed  the  figures  of  ancient 
sunbonneted  ladies  who  remind  me  of  Grandmother  in  the 
garden  which  she  so  dearly  loved  to  supervise.  And  I  am 
departing  before  learning  the  history  of  the  mediaeval, 
round-turreted  chateau  about  which  the  low  stone  build- 


Air  Combats  407 

ings  of  the  village  are  grouped.  It  is  a  tower  with  a 
history  which  dominates  the  scene,  I  know,  not  because 
anyone  ever  told  me  so,  but  because  every  inch  of  its 
conical  roof  is  eloquent  with  romance. 

Now  that  I  am  departing  I  suppose  you  will  be  appre- 
hensive about  me  again,  but  perhaps  it  will  reconcile  you 
to  know  that  even  my  school  has  not  been  danger  proof. 
The  Huns  some  time  ago  dropped  an  aerial  message 
stating  that  they  knew  the  educational  institution  was 
there,  and  promising  to  dump  a  little  hardware  on  it  when 
they  could  spare  the  time  from  more  urgent  business. 
We've  expected  the  promise  to  be  carried  out  several 
times  during  the  present  session.  The  enclosed  card  in- 
dicates the  size  and  sort  of  hardware  that  the  Gothas  drop 
on  such  expeditions.  No  raids  developed,  but  we  soon 
got  used  to  seeing  hostile  airplanes  sailing  overhead,  and 
hardly  a  day  has  gone  by  without  an  air  battle  some- 
where near.  The  other  day,  two  Boche  fliers  appeared 
and  peppered  away  with  their  machine  guns  at  our  can- 
tonment from  an  altitude  too  great  for  any  material 
damage  to  us.  A  telephone  message  to  a  neighboring 
American  aviation  field  brought  two  United  States  pilots 
into  the  air  and  we  received  word  soon  afterwards  that 
it  was  a  case  of  Boche  fi?ii  tout  de  suite.  Our  aviators  got 
both  their  adversaries. 

It  was  too  bad  Lufbery  was  not  equally  successful.  I 
did  not  know  him  personally,  but  I  have  met  the  man  who 
is  his  successor  as  the  most  noted  American  flier,  Douglas 
Campbell.  Campbell's  brother,  a  Lieutenant  of  En- 
gineers, has  been  at  school  here  and  in  the  same  barracks 
with  me.  The  aviator  Campbell  is  one  of  the  quietest, 
most  unassuming  men  I  have  ever  known,  entirely  free  of 
the  blatancy  which  is  too  frequently  a  mark  of  American 
character.  To  talk  with  him  you  would  think  him  too 
mild  a  person  to  down  two  Boche  planes  in  one  day,  chase 


408  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

a  third  back  to  Germany,  and  then  loop  the  loop  over  the 
German  batteries  just  to  show  them  that  their  shrapnel 
doesn't  make  a  damn  bit  of  difference  to  him.  Consider- 
ing the  name  he  bears,  I  know  you  will  say  he  couldn't 
help  being  a  soaring  success. 

Mr.  Simonds's  conclusions  on  the  German  offensive 
are  sound.  It  is  hard  to  see  the  Huns  gain  an  inch,  but  I 
believe  that  the  Allies  are  playing  the  only  game  whereby 
they  can  be  certain  of  victory.  If  Foch  only  seizes  the 
right  minute  to  strike,  the  war  may  be  ended  before  any 
one  realizes  it.  This  is  certainly  within  the  range  of 
possibility. 

The  booklet  of  views  I  mailed  you  three  or  four  days 
ago  will  show  you  some  of  the  places  I  have  lived  in  and 
become  familiar  with  in  recent  months.  I  was  lucky 
enough  to  get  the  booklet  on  my  Decoration  day  visit 
to  Toul. 

In  regard  to  your  allusion  to  the  improvement  in  mail 
service  at  your  end  of  the  line,  I  know  you  will  be  plad 
to  learn  that  the  same  is  true  over  here.     Hope  it  keeps  up. 

I  sent  Wallace  Hoffmann  a  note  yesterday.  He  has 
done  a  very  fine  thing. 

I  am  now  wearing  my  gold  chevron  indicating  six 
months  of  service  in  France.  Hope  I  can  get  to  flash  it 
on  some  of  my  Plattsburg  schoolmates  before  they  get 
theirs. 

I  inclose  along  with  the  picture  of  the  Gotha  bomb  a 
gentler  souvenir  in  the  shape  of  several  more  flowers  of 
another  sort  I  never  saw  before.  I  hope  these  flowers  I 
send  press  well  enough  for  you  to  get  some  idea  of  how 
they  look  when  fresh.  And  here  is  another  picture  I  had 
taken  recently.  What  do  you  think  of  this  one?  And 
what  do  you  think  of  the  moustache?  Tres  beau,  the 
mademoiselles  call  it. 

QUINCY. 


In  Playful  Mood  409 

p.  S.  Should  the  picture  I  sent  recently  (which  was 
taken  just  when  I  left  the  trenches)  have  caused  you  any 
apprehension  as  to  my  thinness  the  one  inclosed  should 
dispel  it.     The  school  fare  fills  out  all  corners. 

QUINCY. 

This  seems  to  be  a  favorable  point  for  the  introduction 
of  what  may  be  called  an  episode  of  Mills's  letter  writing, 
a  few  extracts  from  cards  and  letters  not  addressed  to  his 
parents.  His  fondness  for  children  and  his  facility  in 
making  friends  with  them  has  been  spoken  of.  One  of 
those  whom  he  greatly  liked  and  who  responded  with 
affection  was  Miss  Alice  Hale  Morris,  daughter  of  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  John  Morris,  spoken  of  elsewhere.  The  friendship 
began  when  she  had  not  emerged  into  her  teens.  When 
Mills  went  to  Europe  she  was  close  upon  High  School  age 
as  appears.  He  wrote  her  a  round  dozen  of  little  mis- 
sives, which  not  only  contribute  to  his  picture  of  life 
in  war  but  also  in  their  whimsical  gallantry  to  his  self- 
revelation. 

First  of  all  there  was  a  note  from  Governor's  Island, 
sent  on  October  30,  191 7,  inviting  her  and  her  mother  to 
visit  him  and  see  the  camp.  "We  have  big  tents,"  he 
explains,  "with  stoves  in  them  and  are  real  comfortable 
in  spite  of  the  wind  and  cold."  He  had  not  been  able  to 
get  home  yet  but  expected  to  do  so  soon.  He  adds,  "I 
hope  to  see  you  even  if  I  have  to  wake  you  out  of  your 
beauty  sleep."  However,  a  note  sent  via  Washington 
and  postmarked  December  21  regrets  that  he  "had  to 
run  away  without  seeing  her  and  her  dear  parents  again, 
but  when  I  got  home  it  was  too  late  to  wake  you  up." 
He  asks  her  to  run  in  and  see  his  mother  "as  often  as  you 
can  for  she  loves  you  very  much  and  you  will  be  lots  of 
company  for  her. "  "  My  love  to  you, ' '  he  concludes, '  *  and 
write  to  me  as  often  as  you  can." 


410  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

Then  comes  a  Christmas  day  note : 

Somewhere  in  France, 

December  25,  1917. 

Dear  Little  Lady:  I  opened  your  Christmas  pack- 
ages this  morning,  just  as  you  told  me  to  do,  and  found 
just  the  thing  I  wanted  most  at  that  particular  minute — a 
box  of  cough  drops.  Not  that  I  have  much  of  a  cold,  but 
I  had  told  a  brother  officer  to  buy  me  some  cough  drops 
when  he  went  to  town  yesterday  and  the  darn  fool  forgot 
it.  To  tell  you  the  truth,  I  think  he  forgot  nearly  every- 
thing else  looking  at  the  pretty  French  girls.  Anyway, 
I  forgive  him — that's  the  proper  Christmas  spirit — in 
fact  I  forgive  everybody  but  the  Germans  everything. 
But  I  spent  part  of  the  day  practising  up  to  shoot  at 
them.  We  work  all  the  time,  you  see,  except  when  we're 
making  signs  to  the  pretty  French  girls  and  eating  Christ- 
mas dinner  with  real  turkey  and  "fixins!"  I  hope  that 
you  have  had  a  fine  Christmas  and  that  you  and  your 
dear  parents  are  well  and  happy.  Write  to  me  often  and 
read  my  letters  home;  maybe  I  won't  have  time  to  write 
as  often  as  you  do. 

With  love  and  kisses,  Quincy. 

P.  S.  I  didn't  say  "thank  you"  for  your  Christmas 
present  on  the  other  side  of  this  sheet,  but  you  know  I 
meant  it.  Q.  S.  M. 

A  French  postal  card  "Bonne  Annee,"  showing  a  very 
Gallic  boy  and  girl  exchanging  salutes  in  a  wood,  while 
two  robins  look  on  from  a  bough,  had  this  inscription: 
' '  Much  love  and  many  kisses  to  my  little  lady.  Q.  S.  M. " 
And  on  another  card  on  January  15,  is  this: 

Dear  Little  Lady:  Since  I  cannot  receive  birthday 
greetings  I'm  sending  them.  If  the  mail  service  doesn't 
improve  I'll  soon  begin  to  believe  something  must  have 


spirit  of  France  411 

happened  to  the  United  States.   .    .    .     Lots  of  love  and 
hopes  that  you  are  happy.  Q. 

He  thanks  her  for  a  Christmas  card  received  on  Janu- 
ary 31.  "Winter  is  pretty  nearly  over  here  before  my 
Christmas  mail  arrives."  And  again  on  a  card  post- 
marked February  7 : 

Many  thanks  for  your  two  sweet  letters  that  have  come 
with  Mother's.  My,  what  a  smart  girl  you  are,  to  be  going 
to  High  School.  I  am  going  to  a  school,  too — all  us  Ameri- 
can soldiers  are — for  which  we  have  to  get  up  before  day- 
light and  from  which  we  are  not  turned  loose  until  after 
dark.     And  we're  learning  lots.  Q.  S.  M. 

Love  to  all. 

Under  the  same  date,  but  postmarked  February  12,  he 
wrote  a  letter : 

[St.  Ciergues],  France, 
February  7,  191 8. 

Dear  Little  Lady  :  Here  is  a  little  medallion  I  bought 
for  you  because  I  thought  it  so  pretty.  It  isn't  solid  gold, 
but  it  is  good  and  I  hope  you  will  like  it.  Joan  of  Arc 
is  one  of  the  most  admirable  characters  in  history  to  me. 
And  the  French  people  of  to-day  have  something — a  great 
deal — of  her  spirit. 

I  wrote  you  a  card  the  other  day  saying  that  we  are  all 
going  to  school  over  here  to  learn  how  to  lick  the  Boche. 
Our  school  bell  is  a  bugle  that  calls  us  out  at  5  45  a.m.  and 
we  assemble  now  by  moonlight.  And  it  is  moonlight  again 
when  the  bugle  turns  us  loose  at  bedtime.  How  would 
you  like  those  school  hours?  This  is  just  preparatory 
school,  too,  for  when  we  get  our  high  schooling  and  college 
courses  in  the  trenches  w^e  will  be  in  class  24  hours  a  day. 
So  you  see  you  are  lucky  just  to  be  going  to  High  School 
back  in  New  York  city. 


412  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

The  school-children  over  here  all  dress  alike,  each  one 
wearing  a  black  smock,  something  like  a  wrapper,  over 
his  or  her  clothes,  with  a  little  peaked  hood  which  can  be 
put  over  the  head  in  bad  weather.  The  smock  isn't  a  bad 
idea  either,  for  the  dirt  which  would  otherwise  get  all  over 
the  children's  clothes  when  they  romp  is  all  rubbed  on  it. 
And  there's  lots  of  dirt  over  here. 

It  is  certainly  good  of  you  and  your  parents  to  spend  so 
much  time  with  my  folk.  Mother  mentions  in  every  let- 
ter she  writes  how  considerate  you  all  are.  I  really  believe 
that  she  is  having  such  a  good  time  with  you,  she  isn't  a 
bit  lonely. 

With  lots  of  love  for  you  and  the  warmest  regards  for 
Mamma  and  Daddy,  Your  friend, 

Q.  S.  M. 

Then  there  is  an  undated  card,  which  must  have  been 
enclosed  in  a  letter,  showing  a  ruined  village  in  Lorraine. 
On  the  back  of  it : 

This  card  will  give  you  some  idea  of  that  sort  of  kultur- 
blasted  land  we  are  living  in.  The  more  I  see  of  what  the 
Germans  have  done  to  this  country  and  the  people  who 
live  in  it — particularly  the  women  and  girls — the  worse  I 
hate  them.  They  are  a  race  that  should  be  wiped  off  the 
face  of  the  earth — the  women  of  them  most  of  all.  But 
you  will  be  thinking  I  am  too  blood-thirsty.  Well,  so 
ought  you  to  be,  and  all  American  women. 

Regards  to  your  Mother  and  Daddy  and  lots  of  love  for 
yourself.  Q.  S.  M. 

On  March  19: 

Dear  Little  Lady:  I  am  waiting  expectantly  the 
arrival  of  your  picture,  for  I've  heard  already  how  sweet 
you  looked  in  your  graduation  frock. 


Fought  Like  Veterans  4^3 

Your  letter  was  awaiting  mc  when  I  got  back  from  the 
trenches,  for  we've  been  up  to  do  our  first  bit.  The 
trenches  aren't  nearly  as  bad  as  you  might  think  they  are, 
but  we  made  those  on  the  other  side  of  the  line  too  hot  for 
Fritz.  When  the  Huns  found  that  there  were  Americans 
opposite  them  they  undertook  to  touch  us  up,  and  we  came 
back  at  them  so  hard  they  just  naturally  had  to  move 
out  of  their  first  and  second  lines  and  stay  out.  The 
coolness  of  our  men  was  amazing,  and  so  was  their  eager- 
ness to  get  at  the  Boches.  The  French  say  the  Americans 
fought  like  veterans — and  the  Huns  know  they  did. 

A  card  of  April  22,  acknowledging  letters  and  cards, 
comes  next,  with  a  picture  of  captured  German  flags  dis- 
played at  the  Invalides  in  Paris.  Then  comes,  July  7 
the  last,  alas,  of  all: 

Dear  Little  Lady:  I  received  your  photograph  last 
night  and  it  is  such  a  pretty  picture.  I  am  really  much 
flattered  to  have  a  share  in  the  thoughts  of  such  a 
pretty  young  lady.  I  am  sending  you  a  little  picture  of 
myself  in  return.  It  isn't  nearly  as  nice  as  yours,  but 
maybe  you'll  appreciate  it.  What  do  you  think  of  my 
moustache  anyway?  All  of  us  officers  in  G  Co.  are  grow- 
ing them.  Maybe  we're  trying  to  camouflage  ourselves  as 
Frenchmen.  You  know,  it  is  a  very  rare  thing  to  see  a 
clean-shaven  Frenchman. 

From  what  Dad  has  had  to  say  in  his  letters,  you  folks 
have  been  mighty  kind  to  him  in  Mother's  absence.  He 
seems  to  be  as  busy  as  a  whole  hive  of  bees  with  his  Home 
Defence  League,  and  I  am  glad  for  him  to  have  it  to  oc- 
cupy his  mind.  Besides,  he  may  have  an  opportunity  to 
do  some  truly  useful  work  in  that  way.  Mother  is  making 
has  made,  doubtless,  by  now — a  much  longer  stay 


414  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

South  than  I  ever  expected  her  to,  and  I  am  glad  of  it, 
for  the  longer  her  visit  the  better  off  she  will  be,  I 
think. 

We  had  a  real  quiet  4th  of  July,  but  no  doubt  will  have 
all  the  opportunity  we  want  for  celebrating  later  on.  We 
have  found  France  delightfully  cool  thus  far,  but  very 
dusty.  In  the  winter  it's  the  mud  and  in  the  summer  the 
dust  that  plagues  us.  The  roads  dry  very  quickly  after 
rain,  for  all  the  soil  I  have  seen  here  is  porous.  There  are 
much  larger  sections  of  woodland  than  I  expected  to  see, 
but  you  have  only  to  look  at  the  straight  lines  in  which  the 
trees  stand,  like  soldiers  at  parade,  to  know  that  all  the 
forests  have  been  set  out  by  hand.  And  the  French  will 
just  about  shoot  you  at  sunrise  if  you  cut  a  sapling  as  big 
as  your  wrist.  We  will  have  to  be  as  careful  of  our 
American  trees  if  we  are  to  have  any  forests  left. 

Thank  your  Mother  for  the  note  I  had  from  her  some 
time  since,  and  be  sure  to  remember  me  to  your  Daddy. 
With  lots  of  love  and  kisses, 

QUINCY. 

The  following  letter  to  his  aunt,  Mrs.  J.  L.  Cowan,  was 
written  on  July  4 : 

Dear  M.  L.  :  Here  is  the  latest  copy  of  myself.  What 
do  you  think  of  me  by  this  time  ? 

As  incongruous  as  it  may  seem,  I  am  spending  one  of 
the  quietest  4th's  of  my  existence.  No  doubt,  I  will  ex- 
perience plenty  of  celebrating  of  the  most  exciting  sort 
shortly  to  make  up  for  the  present  ennui.  One  thing 
about  the  army  game  nowadays,  it's  never  dull  if  you  be- 
long to  a  scrapping  unit.  And  this  outfit  is  certainly  in 
that  category.  Certainly  the  U.S.  will  not  send  over  any 
soldiers  with  finer  fighting  spirit.  The  National  Guard  is 
wrong  in  theory,  but  the  fine  quality  of  its  men  will  fre- 


Birds  and  Flowers  4^5 

quently  enable  a  Guard  unit  to  triumph  in  spite  of  its 
handicaps. 

Mother  has  left  you  some  time  ago,  I  suppose.  She 
wrote  enthusiastically  of  her  visit  home,  which  I  am  sure 
must  have  benefited  her  greatly,  and  most  warmly  of 
your  kindness  to  her  at  your  home.  I  hope  that  this  finds 
you  all  well  and  happy.  Don't  worry  if  we  can't  finish 
the  Huns  this  summer.  "  Rome  was  neither  built  nor 
destroyed  in  a  day.  Much  love  to  the  family  and  regards 
to  my  friends.  QuiNCY. 

The  series  of  letters  to  his  home  is  now  resumed.  His 
return  to  Company  G  and  to  the  trenches  was  at  the  same 
old  place,  the  vicinity  of  Badonviller.  But  they  had  put 
on  a  new  dress.  Spring  had  decked  war  in  the  livery  of 
peace.  Mills  could  not  resist  the  flowers.  He  risked 
his  life  to  gather  a  little  cluster  for  home.  His  mother 
still  treasures  the  faded  blossoms  spoken  of  in  the  following 
lines : 

June  i8,  1918. 
Dear  Mother:  Even  the  trenches  can  be  beautiful 
when  they  are  trimmed  with  flowers,  and  the  barbed  wire 
forms  a  trellis  for  rambling  vines,  and  shelter  for  innumer- 
able thrushes  and  other  songsters — one  explanation,  no 
doubt,  of  why  the  cats  have  a  penchant  for  No-Man's- 
Land.  The  birds  warble  all  the  time,  even  when  there  is 
considerable  activity,  and  it  seems  to  me  that  their  voices 
never  sounded  so  sweet  before.  A  number  of  them  in- 
habit the  six  small  trees,  two  birches  and  four  wild  cherry, 
which  rise  on  the  central  island  (entirely  surrounded  by 
trenches)  of  my  strong  point,  or  groupe  de  combat  as  the 
French  call  it.  At  the  base  of  one  of  the  birches  is  a 
flourishing  wild  rose  bush,  literally  covered  with  blossoms, 
some  of  which  I  sneaked  up  and  picked — keeping  not  only 
head  but  also  the  rest  of  me  carefully  DOWN  during  the 


4i6  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

process — a  while  ago.  Here  are  some  of  them  for  you, 
and  also  some  daisies  and  yellow  asters  from  the  edge  of 
one  of  my  trenches. 

I  am  sitting  now  in  an  armchair-like  recess  hollowed  out 
in  the  side  of  a  trench  conveniently  situated  close  to 
my  dugout  entrance.  The  sun  is  warm  and  I  am  enjoy- 
ing a  bath  in  its  rays  as  I  write.  Several  of  the  men, 
rolled  up  in  their  blankets,  are  snoozing  noisily  along  the 
bottom  of  the  trench  nearby.  These  are  the  same  trenches 
that  were  a  quagmire  of  mud  when  I  wrote  you  of  them 
formerly.  Now  that  the  dry  season  is  here,  they  are  as 
comfortable  as  trenches  can  be. 

This  informs  you  that  I  am  back  at  the  old  stand  with 
the  company,  which  I  find  much  the  same  as  ever.  I  am 
glad  to  be  able  to  report  the  return  of  Bum  to  the  fieshpots 
of  G  Co.  After  trying  the  artillery  he  decided  that  the 
infantry  was  the  branch  for  him,  after  all.  He  was  out  to 
visit  me  with  the  chow  carrying  detail  this  morning.  Now 
that  the  trenches  are  so  dry  he  makes  the  rounds  every 
now  and  then,  and  his  calls  always  tone  the  men  up,  al- 
though their  spirits  are  never  by  any  means  what  you 
would  call  low.  Indeed,  their  unflagging  cheerfulness  is 
marvelous.  It  does  not  interfere,  however,  with  an 
increasingly  grim  determination  to  "give  Fritz  hell," 
about  which  there  is  less  said  than  there  is  shown  in 
manner. 

Fritz  is  certainly  getting  his  share  of  hell  in  this  sector 
now.  All  day  long  there  has  not  been  a  period  of  ten 
minutes  when  something  hard  has  not  been  traveling 
in  his  direction.  When  the  artillery  has  not  been  throwing 
big  ones  over,  the  trench  mortars  have  been  plugging  away 
at  him,  and  when  neither  of  these  hell  raisers  has  been 
talking,  the  machine  guns  have  been  sending  strings  of 
bullets  over  our  heads,  spraying  his  positions  with  indirect 
fire.     These  batteries  of  machine  guns  working  remind 


Last  Days  in  Lorraine  417 

me  of  the  racket  made  by  batteries  of  steam  drills 
hammering  away  at  the  rock  bottom  of  Manhattan. 

I  know  that  you  will  be  interested  to  hear  that  I  have 
seen  and  had  long  talks  with  a  number  of  my  officer 
friends  with  whom  I  would  have  come  over  had  I  not  been 
sent  to  this  outfit.  You  can  imagine  we  had  lots  to  say 
to  each  other. 

I  inclose  also  some  wild  forget-me-nots  from  the  edge 
of  the  trench  near  my  dugout  door.  Love  to  Dad  and 
yourself.  Quincy. 

The  flowers  for  which  he  risked  his  life  in  No-Man 's- 
Land  were  a  bunch  of  wild  roses.  The  letter  reached  his 
mother  on  July  21.  On  the  day  on  which  it  was  written, 
(June  18)  the  regiment — the  entire  Rainbow  Division — 
terminated  its  service  in  Lorraine.  Mills  makes  no  men- 
tion of  the  change,  perhaps  he  did  not  know  when  he 
wrote  that  it  was  about  to  take  place.  But  in  the  next 
letter  four  days  after  it  was  made,  he  is  still  silent  regard- 
ing it.  He  seems  to  have  had  always  some  plan  of  dating 
his  letters  so  as  not  to  correspond  with  his  actual  locality 
or  the  conditions  of  service. 

June  22,  1918. 

Dear  Mother  :  Here  are  some  flowers  from  the  garden 
of  the  chateau  utilized  as  our  battalion  headquarters  [in 
Badonviller]  from  the  top  story  of  which  I  witnessed  the 
bombardment  I  wrote  Mr.  Luby  about.  The  garden  is 
laid  out  in  squares  edged  with  box  bushes  trimmed  to 
about  a  foot  in  height,  and  the  flowers  are  blooming  thick 
in  its  beds.  We  have  a  vase  full  of  them  on  the  table  at 
our  officers'  mess  every  meal,  and  while  I  was  on  the  line 
during  the  last  hitch  my  runners  picked  a  bouquet  re- 
ligiously every  day  for  the  empty  shell  case  which  we 
kept  for  a  vase  on  our  dugout  table. 
27 


41 8  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

We  have  continued  to  keep  things  warm  for  the  Dutch, 
who  are  apprehensive,  I  think,  of  a  smash  against  them  in 
these  parts  because  of  the  great  activity  on  our  side  of  the 
line.  Our  batteries  "got  to"  a  big  Boche  ammunition 
dump  behind  the  woods  just  opposite  my  G  Co.  the  last 
morning  I  was  up,  and  the  sound  of  heavy  explosions 
followed  for  half  an  hour,  with  an  accompanying  pall  of 
black  smoke  that  hung  over  the  trees  until  noon.  I  regret 
to  report  that  everything  has  not  been  entirely  in  our 
favor  during  recent  days,  however,  for  the  Boche  have  at 
last  succeeded  in  capturing  prisoners  from  our  regiment. 
They  got  six  men  from  one  of  the  other  companies  after 
8  A.M.  the  other  morning  by  a  ruse.  For  more  than  three 
months  they  had  tried  to  get  prisoners  from  us  by  raids 
but  without  success.  Every  time  they  put  down  their 
barrage  and  came  across  under  the  cover  of  night  they  got 
shot  all  to  hell.  On  one  occasion,  their  last  attempt  by  the 
aggressive  method,  they  got  into  the  front  line  only  to  be 
chewed  up  there,  leaving  ten  dead  and  four  prisoners, 
thus  saving  us  the  trouble  and  expense  of  making  a  raid 
for  prisoners  ourselves. 

All  telephone  conversations  can  be  picked  up  by  the 
' '  listening  in ' '  process,  as  you  know,  rendering  strict  ad- 
herence to  code  absolutely  necessary,  but  after  this 
abortive  raid  an  uncoded  invitation  was  extended  to  the 
Boche  to  come  again.  Instead  they  changed  tactics. 
A  lone  German  showed  himself  pretty  close  to  our  line  in  a 
wooded  section  where  No-Man's-Land  is  all  underbrush, 
and  was  taken  for  a  sniper,  as  he  was  intended  to  be. 
Three  Americans  went  out  to  get  him  and  were  fired  upon, 
losing  one  dead — but  they  got  the  decoy  to  square  that 
account — and  then  several  strong  parties  went  out  to  the 
front  to  get  the  two  bodies.  These  parties  worked  up 
nearly  to  the  German  trench  without  seeing  anyone,  but 
when  they  started  back  they  found  themselves  suddenly 


Raid  and  Ambush  419 

confronted  by  greatly  superior  numbers  of  Boche  who  had 
remained  concealed  in  the  shell  holes  until  they  passed. 
The  Americans  had  to  fight  their  way  back  to  their  own 
trenches,  and  six  of  them  did  not  get  through. 

This  incident  was  of  particular  interest  to  me  as  a  similar 
lone  German  had  showed  himself  rather  ostentatiously 
very  close  to  the  G  Co.  line  when  I  was  in,  a  few  days 
previously.  In  fact  he  made  such  a  show  of  himself  as  to 
look  a  little  too  good  to  be  true  and  drew  only  a  couple  of 
rifle  grenades.  The  next  afternoon  a  sniper  let  loose  with 
a  couple  of  rounds  at  our  position.  And  that  time  we 
combed  No-Man 's-Land  so  clean  with  rifle  grenades — 
they  are  just  about  as  bad  medicine  as  3-inch  shells — that 
if  there  were  any  Fritzes  in  ambush  they  surely  had  one 
devil  of  a  time.  At  any  rate,  we  were  favored  with  no 
further  attention. 

It  looks  very  much  as  though  the  other  company  bit  on 
the  trap  that  was  laid  at  first  for  us.  Anyway,  the  same 
game  won't  work  twice.  In  their  various  attempts  to 
raid  our  regimental  sector  the  Boche  succeeded  in  killing 
several  men,  but  counting  their  known  losses — and  they 
always  carry  their  dead  back  whenever  possible — they 
paid  at  the  rate  of  about  ten  to  one  for  every  American, 
including  the  last  six  of  our  men,  who  may  not  have  been 
taken  ahve.  In  all,  our  regiment  has  killed  off  about 
a  company  of  Huns,  and  the  additional  casualties 
in  wounded  have  amounted  to  as  many  more.  Which 
is  not  doing  so  badly  at  all. 

The  prisoners  we  have  taken  say  their  officers  tell  them 
that  the  Americans  are  poor  fighters,  but  that  the  German 
privates  have  an  entirely  different  opinion  so  firmly  in- 
grained in  them  that  one  of  the  raiding  parties  sent  over 
against  us  had  to  be  prodded  out  of  its  own  trenches  with 
bayonets. 

I  know  that  you  are  naturally  much  disappointed  at  the 


420  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

German  success  of  this  summer,  but  I  would  not  do  any 
worrying  about  it.  The  French  and  English  are  both 
very  confident  of  the  outcome;  they  are  even  more  san- 
guine as  to  the  cessation  of  hostilities  than  are  the  Ameri- 
cans. I  am  certainly  happy  to  have  my  personal  destinies 
in  the  hands  of  Foch,  as  I  may  have  said  to  you  before,  for 
I  believe  that  he  knows  his  business,  and  that  if  I  am  sent 
anywhere  under  his  orders  it  will  not  be  a  case  of  ' '  some- 
body blundered."  It  is  good  to  feel  that  way.  And  I 
will  state  candidly  that  I  believe  more  people  than  the 
Germans  will  be  surprised  by  the  sized  kick  in  the  slats 
the  Huns  get  some  one  of  these  fine  days.  Even  the  fall  of 
Paris  would  not  mean  a  Boche  victory,  and  no  one  on  this 
side  of  the  line  expects  Paris  to  fall.  So  keep  on  smiling. 
Much  love  to  Dad  and  yourself. 

QUINCY. 

In  the  next  letter,  concealment  of  the  great  change  that 
had  come  about  disappears.  This  is  what  had  happened. 
On  June  i8,  after  four  months  of  active  service  on  the 
Lorraine  front,  the  regiment  was  marched  back  toward 
the  Moselle.  There,  it  entrained  and  was  carried  west 
a  twenty-four  hour  journey  to  the  valley  of  the  Marne. 
Regimental  headquarters  were  established  at  St.  Amand 
and  the  men  were  quartered  there  and  in  surrounding 
villages.  It  remained  there  until  about  June  27,  having  a 
complete  period  of  rest  and  recreation.  The  men  played 
ball,  had  concerts,  bathed  in  the  river,  enjoyed  themselves 
with  all  the  rebound  that  comes  to  soldiers  after  a  period  of 
desperate  strain. 

And  the  Lorraine  experience  had  been  a  terrible  one  for 
men  who  had  never  before  seen  a  gun  fired  to  kill  or  in- 
jure. The  1 68th  had  had  almost  four  months  of  continu- 
ous combat  in  the  trenches  or  in  reserve.  It  had  had 
more  than  a  hundred  of  its  officers  and  men  killed  and  from 


High  Hopes  421 

six  to  seven  hundred  wounded,  many  very  seriously. 
Nobody  enjoyed  the  relief  more  than  Mills,  but  it  was 
nearly  over  when  he  began  to  write  about  it : 

June  26,  1918. 

Dear  Mother  :  You  will  be  rejoiced  to  hear  that  I  am 
back  in  a  rest  and  training  area  for  a  while.  We  can  hear 
the  deep-throated  baying  of  the  guns,  very  far  away, 
sometimes  when  there  is  a  great  deal  of  artillery  activity 
and  the  wind  is  in  our  direction,  but  we  are  away  back 
and  due  to  remain  there  for  some  time. 

The  outfit  needs  the  relief,  too,  not  because  of  having 
been  shot  up,  but  because  continued  service  in  the  front 
line  tends  to  lower  the  morale  of  any  military  organiza- 
tion, no  matter  how  good  it  may  be.  And  this  regiment 
has  done  a  long  hitch,  as  you  know. 

There  are  many  American  troops  here  now,  so  many 
that  their  number  is  often  surprising  when  you  strike 
traffic  centres  where  columns  are  passing  in  various 
directions.  And  I  am  here  to  tell  you  that  the  sight  of  the 
American  soldier  fills  the  French  heart  with  joy,  and  in- 
spires lively  demonstrations.  The  good  account  the 
Americans  have  given  of  themselves  wherever  they  have 
been  in  the  line  gives  the  French  great  confidence  in  us, 
and  renders  them  absolutely  sanguine  as  to  the  result  of 
the  war.  And  in  spite  of  the  apparent  recent  successes  of 
the  Huns,  and  of  the  certainty  that  there  will  be  further 
pressure  from  them  in  the  west,  the  situation  is  far  less 
encouraging  for  the  Teutonic  powers  than  it  appears  to  be 
on  its  face.  The  collapse  of  the  Austrian  offensive  against 
the  Italians  is  the  clearest  indication  at  this  time  of  the 
actual  situation  on  the  other  side  of  the  battle  line, 
Austria's  condition  is  actually  little  better  than  Russia's, 
and  the  collapse  of  Russia  has  proved  thus  far  a  barren 
victory  in  most  respects,  except  for  the  relieving  of  Ger- 


422  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

many's  Eastern  army.  It  must  be  becoming  apparent  to 
the  German  people  as  well  as  to  Berlin  that  they  must 
win  now  or  never. 

The  prolonged  inactivity  of  the  Boche  is  evidence  in  it- 
self of  the  frightful  price  they  paid  for  what  they  gained 
in  their  last  offensive.  Had  they  not  suffered  so  heavily 
as  to  render  further  striking  impossible  for  the  time  being, 
they  would  never  have  sacrificed  the  advantage  of  their 
initial  success.  That  the  Allies  have  more  ground  to  sell 
at  the  same  rate  in  German  dead  I  have  no  doubt.  Fur- 
ther German  gains  are  admitted  beforehand  if  they  want 
to  pay  the  price.  In  fact,  the  Allies  may  be  compared  to 
"land  boomers"  in  this  respect. 

From  the  press,  I  judge  that  Japanese  activity  in  the 
East  is  only  a  matter  of  time.  In  fact,  it  would  not  sur- 
prise me  to  hear  of  it  at  any  moment.  If  it  can  be  ef- 
fected without  arousing  the  opposition  of  the  Russians, 
the  whole  consideration  which  has  kept  Japan  out  of 
Siberia  to  date,  I  presume,  the  Russian  collapse  will  be 
wholly  neutralized.  You  see  I  am  an  optimist  on  the  sub- 
ject of  the  war ;  I  am  firm  in  the  convicti'~'n  that  German 
advantage  is  far  more  apparent  than  real,  and  that  nobody 
is  so  bothered  over  this  fact  as  Berlin. 

I  have  seen  a  great  deal  of  the  American  drafted  army  in 
recent  days  and  I  am  enthusiastic  on  the  subject.  I  have 
never  seen  finer  soldiers.  If  they  only  do  as  well  as 
they  look,  they  will  be  invincible.  I  cannot  tell  you  how 
tensely  I  await  news  of  how  they  deport  themselves  in 
action.  Their  appearance  is  sufficient  tribute  to  the  ability 
of  the  training  camp  officers  to  whip  men  into  shape,  so  far 
as  the  mechanical  and  disciplinary  phases  of  soldiering  go. 
If  these  troops  only  have  the  fighting  spirit !  And  I  am 
firmly  convinced  that  the  great  mass  of  them  will.  I  had 
long  talks  with  many  of  my  old  friends,  and  you  may  be 
sure  that  we  poured  out  our  hearts  to  each  other. 


Girls  and  Munitions  423 

I  continue  to  marvel  at  the  wild  flowers  of  France.  Our 
way  to  the  town  in  which  we  are  now  billeted  was  through 
rolling  fields  white  with  daisies,  with  great  splotches  of 
brilliant  red  poppies  and  purple  larkspur  to  make  a  real 
color  scheme.  The  poppies  are  the  most  wonderful 
flowers  I  have  seen  here.  They  grow  in  such  profusion  as 
to  make  you  wonder  whether  the  French,  with  their  irre- 
pressible love  of  the  artistic,  sow  the  seeds  broadcast  just 
as  they  plant  every  row  of  trees  with  a  view  to  de- 
lighting the  eye.  Even  the  grainfields  are  dotted  thick 
with  poppies.  And  they  are  large  enough  to  make  you 
suspect  them  of  being  of  cultivated  variety. 

This  village,  like  all  those  around  it,  takes  you  back  to 
mediaeval  times,  with  its  houses  built  of  hewn  timbers, 
the  interstices  between  which  are  filled  with  mortar.  All 
these  buildings  are  of  the  Elizabethan  type  of  architecture, 
and  appear  fully  that  old.  The  people  are  very  conserva- 
tive, and  are  much  cleaner  than  those  of  the  district  where 
we  first  lived.  Here,  as  everywhere  else,  young  women 
are  as  scarce  as  young  men ;  but  I  think  I  have  solved  the 
mystery.  I  had  the  pleasure  of  motoring  in  a  fine  big 
car  all  the  way  back  from  school  to  my  regiment,  and  en 
route  we  passed  through  munition  plant  towns  where  we 
saw  hundreds  of  young  women  and  girls,  all  clad  in  stock- 
ing-and-bloomer-shirtwaist  uniforms.  I  am  sure  that  the 
girls  have  all  been  called  to  such  service  behind  the  lines. 
And  they  surely  do  look  cute  in  their  working  suits.  They 
lined  up  along  the  curbs  when  they  saw  our  machine  com- 
ing and  cheered  and  clapped  their  hands  and  threw  kisses 
until  we  were  out  of  sight.  It  was  a  great  temptation  to 
reach  out  and  gather  in  an  armful  of  beauty  and  take  it 
right  along.  American  soldiers  on  leave  are  certainly 
lucky  devils,  for  the  French  women  simply  rave  over  them. 
I  am  hoping  to  get  some  leave  myself  sooner  or  later — and 
not  too  later. 


424  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

Here's  hoping  that  you  and  Dad  are  well,  and  that  I 
may  have  some  mail  from  you  soon.  Haven't  had  any 
letters  for  some  days  owing  to  the  change  of  base.  Much 
love.  QuiNCY. 

The  policy  of  obscuring  dates  and  locations  is  resumed 
in  the  letter  which  follows.  On  June  27,  the  Rainbow 
Division  was  ordered  transferred  to  the  Fourth  Army, 
commanded  by  General  Gouraud  and  operating  in  Cham- 
pagne. On  that  afternoon  it  began  a  march  of  35  kilo- 
meters, about  21  miles,  toward  the  front,  and  at  daybreak 
on  the  28th,  thoroughly  wearied,  the  i68th  entered  the 
small  town  of  Courtisols.  There  it  remained  until  July  3, 
so  that  the  letter  which  follows  must  have  been  written 
there : 

June  30,  1 91 8. 

Dear  Dad:  As  to  my  opinions  on  the  elimination  of 
the  German  press  in  America,  I  am  heartily  in  favor  of  its 
elimination  and  disagree  with  The  Evening  Sun's  view. 
The  argument  that  the  German-American  press  may  en- 
able the  Americans  to  keep  posted  on  the  German  lan- 
guage and  thus  be  able  the  better  to  combat  Prussianism 
is  fallacious,  in  that  no  simon  pure  American  ever  reads 
the  German-American  papers.  The  German-American 
press  has  been  always  strictly  propagandist  in  character, 
being  founded  and  subsidized  by  Berlin  for  the  express 
purpose  of  subverting  Americanism.  It  should  have  been 
suppressed  years  ago.  The  fact  that  many  German 
soldiers  have  been  found  to  speak  English  is  not  due  to  the 
fact  that  there  has  been  a  large  English-German  press  in 
Germany  for  many  years,  but  to  the  fact  that  Germany 
systematically  educated  Germans  in  English  for  years  so 
as  to  have  this  advantage  in  the  present  war. 

If  we  want  to  have  similar  advantage,  the  only  way  is  to 


Newspapers  in  German  425 

educate  Americans  systematically  in  the  German  language 
for  that  particular  purpose.  As  things  stand,  to  permit 
German  communities  and  a  German  press  to  exist  as  such 
inside  the  confines  of  the  U.  S.  is  an  anomaly;  they  can 
form  an  unnatural  barrier  to  the  Americanizing  of  people 
of  German  blood.  The  same  thing  is  true  in  lesser  degree 
of  the  other  foreign  language  presses  in  the  United  States. 
Too  many  blunders  are  committed  in  the  name  of  freedom 
of  speech.  If  America  is  good  enough  for  foreign  peoples 
to  immigrate  to,  its  language  is  good  enough  for  them  to 
learn  and  speak. 

I  am  glad  that  the  attempt  to  build  specimen  trenches 
in  Central  Park  was  defeated.  It  was  indefensible. 
Your  pamphlet  about  the  devil's  resignation  has  had  wide 
circulation  already  in  G  Co.  because  the  man  who  wrote  it 
is  known  to  many  of  the  men. 

So  you  want  me  to  go  over  into  Germany  and  get  a 
Boche  helmet  for  you.  Well,  that's  rather  a  large  order. 
The  Boche  have  a  way  of  hanging  on  to  their  headgear. 
But  in  due  time  I  will  no  doubt  have  some  personal 
souvenirs  to  send  you.  Whenever  our  men  have  bagged 
Germans  it  is  a  fact  that  they  have  darn  near  cut  the 
clothes  off  them  for  souvenirs.  It  is  a  joke  in  the  outfit 
that  whenever  anybody  shoots  a  Boche  his  buttons  are  off 
before  he  hits  the  ground. 

Just  keep  my  commission  for  me.  Have  it  framed  if 
you  want  to.  It  would  be  only  in  my  way  over  here. 
Congratulations  on  your  Defence  League  company's 
having  won  the  silver  cup.  Maybe  I  will  have  the  chance 
to  put  you  through  your  paces  some  day  and  see  what 
you  really  can  do.  Here  are  two  of  my  most  recent  pic- 
tures, same  as  I  have  sent  Mother  already,  and  a  copy  of 
our  regimental  paper.  The  Wild  Rose,  which  is  issued  by 
Chaplain  Robb  of  the  i68th. 

Give  my  very  best  regards  to  all  my  friends.     Let  me 


426  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

hear  from  you  when  you  have  time.  And  I  think  you 
may  be  sure  that  the  men  in  the  army  generally  share  my 
views  as  to  the  German-American  press.  Love  to  Mother 
and  yourself.  Quincy. 


The  regiment  was  now  in  the  general  neighborhood  of 
Chalons,  historic  ground  for  fifteen  hundred  years,  made 
more  memorable  by  the  new  life  and  death  struggle  in 
progress  upon  it.  It  is  a  barren  section  of  Champagne, 
the  landscape  being  made  up  largely  of  chalk  and  heather. 
However,  the  American  soldiers  had  several  more  days  of 
peace  in  it  until  the  night  of  July  3  when  they  were  once 
again  sent  marching  in  the  direction  of  the  battlefront. 
They  advanced  from  Courtisols  twenty  miles  to  Camp 
3-5.  On  the  Fourth,  they  reached  Suippes,  battered  into 
ruins  by  the  German  guns.  Presumably  it  was  while 
halted  in  this  place  that  Mills  next  wrote,  or  it  may  have 
been  just  after,  when  the  regiment  was  cantoned  in  Camps 
3-5  and  4-5,  about  four  kilometers  to  the  north  of  the 
ruined  town: 

July  4,  1918. 

Dear  Mother:  I  know  you  will  applaud  my  cele- 
brating the  Glorious  Fourth  in  an  eminently  safe  and  sane 
way  by  writing  to  you.  One  of  my  men  in  a  letter  I  just 
censored  declared  he  wouldn't  feel  as  if  he  were  celebrat- 
ing the  occasion  properly  unless  he  were  back  in  the 
trenches,  but  he  will  probably  have  all  the  opportunity 
later  to  make  up  for  any  present  omission. 

This  leads  me  to  comment,  as  I  had  intended  doing  be- 
fore, on  young  France's  insatiable  appetite  for  celebrating 
in  any  noisy  manner  possible.  You  would  think  the 
youngsters  in  the  half -ruined  towns  in  the  advanced  areas, 
where  it  was  quite  the  ordinary  thing  for  shells  to  let  go 


Growing  Gallicized  427 

close  by,  would  have  had  enough  of  noise,  but  I  have  seen 
bunches  of  them  busy  setting  off  the  French  equivalent 
for  firecrackers  by  the  half  day.  The  sight  of  these 
gamins  gamboling  around  with  their  gas  masks  slung  over 
their  shoulders  ready  for  use  against  gas  shells  always 
struck  me  as  strangely  incongruous.  But  now  I  am  di- 
verted by  a  very  different  sort  of  gamboling  with  which 
a  very  different  variety  of  kid  is  favoring  me.  The 
barnyard  upon  which  the  window  of  my  present  billet 
looks  is  populated  by  a  very  cosmopolitan  citizenry, 
prominent  among  its  best  families  being  a  goat  tribe  which 
is  in  no  way  in  danger  of  the  race  suicide  peril  attributed 
to  France.  Its  kids  furnish  me  with  no  end  of  amusement 
by  their  gambolings  and  caperings. 

I  have  just  been  in  conversation  with  the  mistress  of  the 
barnyard,  an  elderly  widow  of  extremely  ample  propor- 
tions, who  told  me  of  her  two  sons  in  the  war,  one  now 
wounded  and  in  a  hospital  in  Paris,  and  the  other  still 
fighting  for  France  after  seeing  both  the  battles  of  Verdun 
and  Rheims.  This  leads  up  to  a  fact  which  will  cause  you 
much  gratification,  I  know,  namely  that  with  the  past  two 
months  I  have,  all  at  once,  sprouted  a  very  handy  French 
vocabulary,  and  can  manage  to  come  to  an  understanding 
with  pretty  nearly  any  of  the  natives  I  strike,  although  I 
find  it  always  much  easier  to  understand  and  make  myself 
understood  by  the  educated  class.  Also,  strange  as  it  may 
seem,  if  it  happens  to  be  a  demoiselle,  petite  and  pretty, 
with  whom  I  am  conversing,  I  frequently  amaze  myself  by 
my  loquacity. 

I  am  glad  you  are  to  realize  some  ready  cash  out  of  your 
farm,  but  I  must  confess  that  it  goes  to  my  heart  to  think 
of  stripping  it  of  its  trees.  I  feel  that  I  never  want  to 
visit  it  again,  although,  of  course,  small  growth  will  in  a 
few  years  keep  the  land  from  looking  so  bare.  I  think 
you  will  admit  that  my  judgment  as  to  holding  on  to  the 


428  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

place  has  been  justified  by  the  price  you  received  for  the 
timber.  I  would  advise  you  to  continue  to  hold  on  to  the 
land  now.  By  all  means  invest  the  money  in  Liberty 
Bonds. 

I  am  interested  in  the  Simonds  and  Belloc  war  resumes, 
and  hope  you  will  continue  to  send  them.  They  are  very 
reasonable  interpretations  of  events  in  the  field,  and 
always  enlightening  in  some  respects. 

Your  reference  to  the  Statesville  mocking  birds  reminds 
me  to  say  that  my  school  area  teemed  with  them,  and  the 
way  they  sang  in  the  bright  moonlit  nights  of  my  stay  there 
[nightingales?]  was  a  great  joy  to  me.  I  have  heard  none 
here  or  elsewhere  in  France  that  I  have  been. 

Just  while  writing  I  had  a  surprise  that  will  interest  you. 
I  called  in  one  of  the  men  of  my  platoon  to  do  a  company 
errand.  He  was  a  new  man,  one  of  the  drafted  bunch 
that  came  to  us  two  months  ago,  and  I  idly  asked  him 
where  he  hailed  from  in  the  U.  S.  His  reply  was,  North 
Carolina.  His  name  is  Bringle,  and  his  home  is  in  Salis- 
bury. And  I  can  assure  you  he  was  a  happy  soldier  to 
learn  that  his  platoon  commander  was  almost  from  his  own 
town.  He  is  a  very  good  soldier,  quiet  and  earnest.  He 
told  me  he  could  have  claimed  exemption  as  a  worker  in 
the  Du  Pont  powder  mills,  but  didn't  feel  like  doing  so, 
and  that  he  has  a  brother  in  the  regular  army. 

I  am  inclosing  another  one  of  those  booklets  of  views, 
and  hope  it  reaches  you  O.  K.  I  inclose  also  one  of  the 
company's  daily  mess  menus,  which  I  have  to  supervise  as 
company  mess  officer.  The  men's  fare  is  solid  and  there  is 
plenty  of  it.  They  get  plenty  of  white  bread  baked  in 
army  bakeries,  but  we  officers  prefer  the  French  war 
bread,  or  "black  bread,"  as  the  French  call  it,  and  always 
swap  our  share  of  the  issue  for  some  French  family's  daily 
ration.  The  French  are  eager  to  trade,  but  I  can't  see 
why.     Love  to  Dad  and  yourself.  Quincy. 


American  Rations  429 

The  mocking  bird  does  not  inhabit  Europe.  It  is  Ukely 
that  Mills  mistook  for  it  the  nightingale,  which  is  the  only 
bird  that  sings  by  moonlight  in  that  region.  In  sweet- 
ness and  quality  of  note,  the  two  might  easily  be  mistaken 
for  each  other. 

By  way  of  proof  that  he  did  not  exaggerate  the  good 
fare  of  the  American  soldiers,  the  menus  he  enclosed  are 
interesting : 


Breakfast 

Dinner 

Supper 

Coffee 

Beans,  boiled 

Mashed  potatoes 

Bread 

Beef 

Gravy 

Bacon 

Potatoes  " 

Steak 

Gravy 

Coffee 

Coffee 

Butter 

Bread 

Bread 

The  division  now  advanced  into  a  wooded  region  which 
with  two  French  it  held  against  nine  German  divisions 
mustered  for  a  drive  to  recapture  the  line  of  the  River 
Mame.  The  French  high  command  had  advance  intelli- 
gence of  this  attack  and  made  corresponding  prepara- 
tions. Every  night  from  July  4  to  July  14  the  entire  army 
took  the  alert  at  midnight  and  stood  under  arms  imtil 
daybreak  ready  to  smash  the  enemy's  onset.  General 
Gouraud  issued  a  general  order  to  the  troops  in  which  he 
said: 

We  are  awake  and  on  our  guard.  .  .  .  You  will  fight  on  a 
terrain  that  you  have  transformed  by  your  labor  and  persever- 
ance into  a  powerful  fortress.  This  fortress  will  be  invincible 
and  all  the  approaches  will  be  well  guarded. 

The  bombardment  will  be  terrible.  You  will  support  it 
without  weakness.  The  assault  will  be  fierce — but  your 
position  and  your  armament  are  formidable.  In  your  breasts 
beat  the  brave  and  strong  hearts  of  free  men. 

None  shall  glance  to  the  rear;  none  shall  yield  a  step.  .  .  . 
You  will  break  this  assault  and  it  will  be  a  happy  day. 


430  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

During  the  period  of  waiting,  Mills  found  time  to  write 
three  letters,  if  the  dates  be  regarded  as  genuine.  It  will 
be  observed,  however,  that  they  make  no  reference  to  the 
impending  fight,  in  fact  seem  to  have  no  reference  to 
actually  prevailing  conditions.  The  location  of  himself 
and  the  dating  of  the  letters  of  July  I2  and  14  at  a  rest 
camp  is  particularly  puzzling  unless  he  happened  to  be 
in  reserve  on  these  days,  for  on  both  the  army  was  in  a 
fever  of  expectation  of  the  attack  which  actually  opened 
at  ten  minutes  after  midnight  on  the  morning  of  the  15th. 

The  most  plausible  explanation  seems  to  be  that  in 
order  to  avoid  stimulating  pictures  of  terror  and  peril  in 
his  parents'  minds,  he  never  spoke  of  any  fighting  in  the 
future  or  present  tense.  Only  when  it  was  over,  did  he 
reveal  the  dangers  he  had  passed  and  then  sparingly. 
Only  once  did  he  depart  from  this  policy  of  acknowledg- 
ing his  own  risk.  The  occasion  will  be  found  in  the  next 
chapter  and  it  has  a  strange  significance.  The  following, 
though  seemingly  contemporaneous  with  one  of  the  hard- 
est fought  and  bloodiest  battles  of  the  war,  breathe  little 
but  a  spirit  of  peace : 

July  8,  1918. 

Dear  Mother:  Thanks  for 's  fourleafed  clover. 

Between  hers  and 's  I  should  have  good  luck.     Your 

references  in  your  recent  letters  to  the  heat  remind  me  to 
say  that  the  coolness  of  this  climate  to  date  has  amazed 
me.  To-day  I  am  wearing  a  sleeveless  sweater,  a  flannel 
shirt  and  my  blouse,  and  I  am  not  more  than  comfortable. 
There  has  not  been  a  night  I  have  not  slept  under  my  bed- 
ding roll's  sleeping  bag  and  three  blankets.  The  tem- 
perateness  of  the  weather  has  been  a  great  blessing  to  us. 
The  few  hot  days  have  gone  hard  with  men  who  never 
knew  before  what  it  was  to  have  to  go  without  ice  and 
ice  cream  and  ice  cream  sodas.     I  really  believe  that  on 


Prosperous  Fields  43 1 

such  days  they  would  prefer  an  honest-to-God  American 
ice  cream  parlor  to  all  the  wine  cellars  in  the  earth.  About 
the  only  way  to  come  in  contact  with  ice  over  here  is  to 
be  sent  to  hospital,  and  this  is  a  means  not  altogether 
popular. 

We  haven't  had  a  single  thunderstorm,  and  this  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  the  crops  are  advanced  almost  to  the 
period  of  harvest.  Some  of  the  grain  appears  to  be  fully 
ready  for  the  reaper,  but  the  fields  of  wheat  are  not  yet 
ready  for  cutting.  There  is  much  wheat  in  this  section, 
and  it  is  of  the  finest,  standing  nearly  to  my  shoulder.  It 
seems  queer  to  see  no  corn  anywhere.  Potatoes  are 
grown  in  great  profusion,  and  do  not  seem  to  be  attacked 
by  bugs  as  in  our  country. 

The  people  are  frugal  but  well-to-do  generally,  and 
this  is  the  first  time  I  have  been  in  a  house  in  France 
where  the  walls  were  not  covered  with  Catholic  symbols. 
Evidently  there  are  Protestants  here.  We  are  the  first 
American  troops  to  be  billeted  in  this  locality,  and  the 
people  are  very  kind  to  us.  But  I  fear  that  our  prosperity 
will  spoil  them,  as  it  does  everywhere.  One  of  our  men 
created  something  of  a  panic  by  displaying  when  he 
shaved  out  at  the  watering  trough  his  gold  washed  shaving 
kit — it  sells  for  $io  back  in  the  States.  The  old  French- 
man who  owns  the  place  called  in  all  the  neighbors  to  see, 
and  I  have  no  doubt  that  word  went  abroad  immediately 
that  even  American  private  soldiers  have  solid  gold 
shaving  sets. 

On  our  railway  journey  hither  the  men  had  a  treat  in 
the  sight  of  a  real  American  locomotive  with  * '  a  real  HE 
whistle,"  as  one  of  them  put  it  in  writing  home.  They 
express  at  all  times  deep  contempt  for  the  shrill  squealing 
French  locomotives,  and  the  continental  freight  cars 
always  evoke  laughter.  One  of  our  men  says  he  is  going 
to  take  one  home  with  him  for  a  watch  charm,  and  all 


432  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

compare  them  with  the  lO-cent  store  toy  tin  trains. 
"Never  before,"  wrote  one,  "had  I  gotten  an  idea  of  the 
true  value  of  a  soldier.  In  one  end  of  the  tiny  box  car 
in  which  I  rode  were  four  mules,  in  the  other,  twenty  of  us 
fighters  for  democracy."  But  the  men  always  treat  such 
hardships  as  jokes.  Whenever  they  passed  through  rail- 
way stations  they  always  "B-a-a-d"  and  "M-o-o-d"  in 
chorus,  while  the  mystified  French  probably  concluded 
that  all  Americans  are  crazy. 

The  spirit  of  the  men  has  been  always  fine,  whether  rid- 
ing in  overcrowded  and  springless  box  cars  or  marching 
with  heavy  packs.  The  hikes  have  been  hard  and  many 
men  have  had  to  drop  out,  but  it  has  done  me  good  to 
see  the  drafted  men  of  the  company  grit  their  teeth  and 
stick  to  it. 

Some  of  them  who  were  not  fit  to  hike  refused  trans- 
portation just  because  they  didn't  want  the  volunteers  to 
think  them  quitters.  That  is  their  spirit,  and  it  is  a  good 
sign  for  the  National  Army.  And  I  get  a  lot  of  satisfac- 
tion out  of  the  fact  that  the  man  who  is  the  life  of  my 
platoon  on  trying  marches  is  a  drafted  man,  an  Irishman 
from  Pennsylvania  named  Forney,  who  always  begins  to 
open  up  just  about  the  time  he  sees  the  fellows  getting 
tired.  From  then  on,  he  kids  everybody,  keeps  every- 
body laughing,  and  somehow  everybody  gets  in  without 
knowing  how. 

He  has  a  little  running  mate  named  Hancock  who  acts 
as  his  foil,  and  between  them  the}'"  beat  any  vaudeville 
comedy  duo  I  ever  paid  money  to  see.  On  our  last  hike 
Hancock,  who  is  our  company  pigeoneer,  was  affected  by 
nosebleed,  and  Forney  kept  the  whole  platoon  in  hysterics 
the  rest  of  the  hike  describing  how  Hancock  had  been  kicked 
in  the  face  by  one  of  his  own  pigeons.  The  fact  that  Han- 
cock carried  no  pigeons,  and  hasn't  had  any  since  being 
trained  for  his  job,  didn  't  affect  the  humor  of  the  situation. 


Vin  Rouge  433 

It's  a  great  life,  but  I  don't  believe  you  would  appre- 
ciate the  hiking. 

Much  love  to  Dad  and  yourself.  Quincy. 

July  II,    1918. 

Dear  Mother  :  I  have  a  little  time  at  present,  and  will 
take  advantage  of  it  to  drop  you  an  extra  letter,  as  writing 
letters  is  my  favorite  outdoor  and  indoor  sport,  giving  me 
almost  as  much  pleasure  as  receiving  them. 

If  I  remember  rightly,  you  inquired  somewhat  tenta- 
tively a  while  back  as  to  the  nature  of  the  beverages  we 
get  to  drink  over  here.  Well,  A.  E.  F.  orders  limit  sol- 
diers to  light  wine  and  beer,  but  as  a  matter  of  fact  you  can 
get  pretty  nearly  anything  you  want,  and  I  have  tried 
about  all  varieties.  I  am  just  about  as  hard  a  drinker  as 
I  have  always  been,  so  you  needn't  worry.  Personally,  I 
would  be  glad  to  see  a  bone  dry  army  for  the  good  of  all 
concerned,  although  I  have  had  no  trouble  of  any  real 
account  with  my  own  platoon  on  the  drinking  score. 

I  consider  it  best  to  be  tolerant  with  the  men.  So  long 
as  a  man  keeps  himself  fit  at  all  times  for  service  while  up 
in  the  fighting  area,  I  am  not  going  to  see  him  if  he  gets 
happy  back  in  the  training  area,  unless  he  gets  so  badly 
lit  up  as  to  render  discipline  necessary.  There  is  a  whole 
lot  to  the  case  as  presented  thus  by  one  of  my  men: 
"Lieutenant,  what  the  hell  is  a  man  goin'  to  do  if  he  don't 
get  vin-rouged-up  once  in  a  while?  They  keep  us  either 
on  the  line  or  confined  to  training  areas  where  we  can't 
get  to  even  a  good  village,  let  alone  a  city.  And  a  sol- 
dier's a  human  bein'.  If  he  don't  get  a  chance  to  let  off 
steam  once  in  a  while,  he'll  go  crazy," 

I  have  to  admit  that  a  soldier  is  human,  for  more  than 

once  when  I  have  been  hard  worked  and  sore  on  the  world 

in  general  I  have  had  to  put  a  bottle  of  champagne  under 

my  belt  to  get  out  of  the  rut.     But  not  one  of  my  men 

28 


434  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

has  ever  seen  me  under  the  influence  of  Uquor,  nor,  in- 
deed, has  any  officer.  I  use  the  cup  that  cheers  strictly 
for  cheering,  and  not  inebriating,  purposes.  And,  on  the 
whole,  I  feel  that  the  men  hold  themselves  in  hand  mighty 
well.  If  they  could  buy  ice  cream  sodas  I  really  believe 
that  the  amount  they  spend  for  booze  would  be  cut  in  half. 
Now  that  the  dry  season  is  on,  the  roads  are  thick  with  a 
fine,  white,  powder-like  dust  that  chokes  your  throat  and 
makes  you  mortally  thirsty.  Drinking  water  that  has 
not  been  chemically  purified  is  forbidden,  and  after  it  has 
been  so  treated  it  is  never  as  cool  as  before.  Ice  is  un- 
known. So,  many  times,  I  have  bought  bad  wine  in  an 
endeavor  to  slake  my  thirst.  This  water  situation  is,  in 
fact,  our  greatest  hardship  in  summer  just  as  lack  of  fuel 
is  our  greatest  hardship  in  winter. 

As  to  my  own  indulgence :  I  have  invested  quite  heavily 
in  champagne,  which  is  relatively  cheap  here.  I  find  a 
clear  white  wine  known  as  Graves  one  of  the  most  pleasant 
drinks  obtainable,  however.  One  of  my  winter  favorites 
was  "chaud  rhum,''  or  "grog  Americain,"  which  is  nothing 
more  than  an  excellent  hot  toddy  concocted  with  boiling 
water,  Jamaica  rum  and  sugar.  This  is  sometimes  made 
with  cognac,  but  I  prefer  my  cognac  in  cofTee.  Coffee 
heavily  spiked  in  this  fashion  is  one  of  the  finest  drinks 
I  have  tried  for  cold  weather. 

The  French  are  great  on  brandies  made  from  all  sorts 
of  fruits.  Cassis,  made  from  cherries,  is  very  palatable, 
but  most  of  them  I  do  not  care  for  at  all.  The  most  viru- 
lent of  all  of  them  is  mirahelle,  made  from  plums.  It  is  a 
fiery  white  liquor  corresponding  to  American  "third  rail" 
or  "white  lightning,"  and  three  drinks  of  it  will  make  you 
climb  a  steel  high-tension  pole  and  bite  the  insulators  right 
off  the  crossarms.  I  know,  for  I ' ve  tried  it — once.  Never 
again!  The  one  thing  the  French  authorities  have  really 
shut  down  on  is  absinthe.     Perhaps  there  are  places  where 


Longing  for  Respite  435 

you  can  find  it  in  the  big  cities,  but  I  haven't  been  able 
to  taste  any  yet.  Very  passable  beer  is  obtainable,  and  I 
have  lapped  up  some  of  that,  too,  but  not  as  much  as  I 
would  use  if  it  were  good  American  brew. 

Speaking  of  the  dryness  of  the  roads,  the  dry  season 
is  just  as  dry  as  the  wet  season  is  wet  over  here.  Showers 
are  rare,  and  we  still  have  to  have  our  first  thunderstorm. 
I  have  been  very  much  pleased  at  the  fact  that  the  men  in 
writing  home  are  now  expressing  a  much  higher  opinion  of 
France  than  they  did  when  they  first  landed  and  wallowed 
in  its  mud.  The  fine  fields  of  grain  appeal  to  them,  and 
they  are  always  remarking  on  the  smooth  highways  and 
the  wonderful  wild  flowers.  They  would  all  prefer  to  be 
back  in  the  good  old  U.  S.  A.,  though.  But  I  believe  that 
if  they  could  only  "parler"  with  the  mademoiselles  when 
they  meet  them  they  wouldn't  think  this  such  a  bad 
country  after  all.  Personally,  I  don't  think  it  half  bad. 
And  while  "war  is  hell,"  as  Sherman  said,  it  has  certain 
compensations  if  you  can  only  get  to  a  real  civilized  town 
now  and  then. 

I  hope  the  pressure  will  let  up  some  time  so  that  officers 
and  men  can  get  their  leaves.  We  have  been  at  the  grind 
pretty  steadily  ever  since  our  arrival,  and  leaves  would 
be  of  real  benefit.  But  as  long  as  the  Hun  drive  menace 
lasts  none  of  us  would  want  to  be  running  around  enjoying 
ourselves  at  the  rear,  of  course.  The  long  period  of  Ger- 
man inactivity  is  a  most  surprising  thing.  And,  however 
much  the  Huns  may  be  gathering  their  strength  for  an- 
other mighty  lunge,  the  great  length  of  time  between  lunges 
is  most  eloquent  testimony  to  what  the  others  have  cost 
them.  I  have  thought  each  week  for  the  past  month  that 
the  next  must  surely  see  a  resumption  of  the  great  battle. 
That  the  resumption  must  come  soon  is  inevitable. 

Dad  referred  in  one  of  his  letters  to  Mr.  Cole,  of  The 
Evening  Sun,  having  entered  service  in  some  fashion.    He 


436  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

is  with  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  and  will  no  doubt  stand  his  share 
of  danger.  Two  "Y"  men  were  killed  and  one  injured 
with  our  outfit.  They  perform  a  real  service,  and  it's  to 
Cole's  honor  that  he's  doing  his  bit  that  way. 

The  Red  Cross  has  been  more  in  evidence  recently, 
having  distributed  tobacco  and  chocolate.  If  it  could 
manage  to  provide  ice  cream  cones  at  cost  it  would  cer- 
tainly confer  a  priceless  boon.  The  men  had  a  lot  of  fun 
some  time  back  out  of  a  story  in  the  papers  about  night- 
shirts the  Red  Cross  had  sent  over — for  the  soldiers  in 
hospitals,  I  suppose.  Anyway,  the  idea  of  soldiers  in 
nightshirts  hit  their  funny  bones. 

Well,  I  guess  I'll  ring  ofiE  and  go  have  a  look  at  the  com- 
pany supper,  one  dish  for  which,  it  may  surprise  you  to 
know,  will  be  German  fried  potatoes.  "Another  reason 
for  fighting  the  damn  Dutch,"  as  one  of  my  men  wrote 
back  on  hearing  from  home  that  his  little  sister  had  German 
measles.  Much  love  to  Dad  and  yourself,  and  regards 
to  the  friends.  Quincy. 

Rest  Camp,  July  12,  191 8. 

Dear  Mother:  Another  bunch  of  mail  from  you  to 
hand.  It  surprises  me  that  you  have  no  strenuous  protest 
to  offer  against  the  moustache.  One  of  my  reasons  for 
raising  it  was  to  kid  you.  It  will  interest  you  to  know  that 
said  moustache  is  red,  and  does  not  at  all  match  my  hair  in 

color.     Suppose  I  will  now  have  to  emulate  Mr. and 

dye  it. 

I  am  much  relieved  by  the  receipt  of  your  earlier  letter 
regarding  the  sale  of  the  timber — delayed  in  delivery — 
saying  that  only  the  trees  above  8  inches  in  diameter  will 
be  taken.     I  am  so  glad  the  place  will  not  be  stripped  bare. 

We  are  now  located  in  another  very  pleasant  camp  in  the 
woods,  with  the  men  still  resting  and  getting  into  shape 
for  further  service.     Not  the  least  attractive  feature  of  our 


Paper  Bombardment  437 

present  camp  is  a  little  wire  inclosure  inhabited  by  one 
large  black  rabbit,  which  wears  a  red  ribbon  that  shows 
off  his  color  very  effectively,  and  two  half -grown  white 
ones.  They  are  very  tame,  and  whenever  anyone  passes 
within  sight  of  their  inclosure  stand  up  on  their  hind  legs 
with  their  noses  through  the  wire  begging  for  weeds.  We 
also  have  a  large  friendly  gray-and-white  Tommy.  Our 
dog  views  the  rabbits  with  great  interest  and  the  cat  with 
great  respect. 

Your  apprehensions  lest  Wilson  may  incline  to  favor 
too  easy  terms  for  Germany  when  peace  comes  remind 
me  to  speak  of  an  incident  that  occurred  while  we  were 
up  on  the  line — several  incidents,  in  fact.  These  were 
the  shooting  over  of  barrages  of  propaganda  missiles.  We 
sent  over  thousands  of  them,  a  great  waste  of  money  in 
my  opinion,  for  the  only  sort  of  propaganda  which  can 
impress  a  German  has  to  hurt  him  physically.  The  more 
relentless  the  President  can  make  the  Germans  believe 
we  are,  the  better  for  us. 

The  Huns  also  sent  over  some  of  their  reading  matter, 
including  among  other  things  big  pictorial  sheets  demon- 
strating that  the  Allies  had  used  pictures  of  former  Rus- 
sian atrocities  as  illustrations  of  German  atrocities  in 
Belgium  and  Northern  France.  A  great  crowd  of  soldiers 
gathered  to  look  at  one  of  these  sheets,  and  the  following 
verdict  rendered  for  the  crowd  by  one  of  these  plain  men 
will  do  your  heart  good,  I  know:  "These  pictures  don't 
prove  a  damn  thing  except  that  the  Germans  can  make 
pictures  lie.  Didn't  they  destroy  Belgium  when  it  was 
neutral?  Well,  what  they  did  proves  what  they  are." 
So  you  see  the  Kaiser's  money  is  equally  wasted  on  propa- 
ganda. 

I  continue  the  picture  of  health.  The  thistle  inclosed 
is  one  of  the  same  sort  I  used  to  find  back  in  the  environs 
of  New  York.     There  are  many  more  of  them  here  than  I 


438  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

saw  there.  Much  love  to  Dad  and  yourself,  and  regards 
to  the  friends.  Quincy. 

Rest  Camp,  July  14,  1918. 

Dear  Mother:   Your  hope  as  expressed  in  a  recent 

missive  to  me,  that  the  next  draft  get  simply 

echoes  a  sentiment  I  had  already  expressed  to  you,  I  think. 
But  the  individual  I  really  want  to  see  them  put  a  uniform 

on  is .     About  the  worst  stuff — in  spirit,  I  mean 

— that  I  have  seen  has  been  the  leaves  from  his  own  note- 
book while  over  here  as  a  war  correspondent.  The  notes 
were  so  obviously  those  of  a  mildly  and  complacently  in- 
terested bystander  patronizingly  favoring  the  show  with 
a  passing  glance.  He  is  a  poseur,  the  sort  of  individual, 
a  mixture  of  fatuity  and  real  talent,  so  admirably  selected 
by  Gilbert  and  Sullivan  for  the  hero  of  Patience.  There 
is  no  excuse  for  being  out  of  service  which  I  hold  in  greater 
contempt  than  that  of  family  responsibility,  the  one  that 

he  and offer.     In  the  contingent  of  drafted  men 

sent  to  my  company  there  were  a  number  of  married  men 
whose  services  at  home  are  really  needed  by  their  depen- 
dents, I  know,  because  they  come  from  the  class  which 
always  earns  its  bread  by  the  sweat  of  its  brow. 

For  a  man  of  still  undetermined  possibilities  for  real 
usefulness  like  John  Purroy  Mitchel  to  die  when  such 
parasites  as  I  have  been  referring  to  continue  to  exist,  is 
shameful.  I  was  not  entirely  surprised  at  the  news  of 
Mitchel's  death.  He  was  a  bunch  of  nerves,  and  nerves 
are  bad  things  for  aviators  to  have.  In  fact,  I  think  that 
the  physical  requirements  for  the  aviation  service  must 
have  been  waived  to  admit  him.  I  was  afraid  that  he 
would  die  by  accident,  but  it  was  too  bad  that  the  accident 
could  not  have  been  averted  until  he  had  had  the  pleasure 
of  bringing  down  at  least  one  Hun. 

Much  love  to  Dad  and  yourself.  Quincy. 


Battle  in  Champagne  439 

The  German  army  virtually  lost  the  Champagne  bat- 
tle of  July  14  to  19,  for  which  they  had  so  long  made 
ready,  on  the  very  first  day.  The  completeness  of  the 
French  preparations  baffled  all  their  plans.  They  fought 
on  for  four  days,  but  made  a  final  retirement  on  the 
night  of  July  19-20.  The  American  troops  behaved 
with  wonderful  coolness  and  valor.  A  French  writer 
spoke  of  them  as  going  in  as  if  the  field  of  action  were  a 
football  ground.  General  Naulin  issued  a  General  Order 
praising  them.  The  losses  of  the  i68th  were  35  men  killed 
and  nearly  a  hundred  wounded.  The  Rainbow  Division 
were  the  only  American  troops  in  that  battle  with  General 
Gouraud's  army.  Orders  relieving  it  were  received  at 
9  o'clock  on  the  night  of  the  i8th,  when  the  result  of  the 
battle  was  no  longer  doubtful.  It  withdrew  to  the  rear 
on  the  19th.  While  in  a  reserve  position,  during  the 
struggle  or  just  after  its  close,  Mills  wrote : 

July  18,  1918. 

Dear  Mother  :  I  am  writing  to  you  Hterally  from  the 
field  of  battle  about  which  you  will  read  long  before  this 
reaches  you. 

Although  in  reserve,  our  battalion  suffered  its  heaviest 
casualties  to  date  in  the  resistance  of  the  Hun  attack 
which  began  three  days  ago.  Considering  the  strafing  to 
which  the  locality  we  occupy  was  subjected,  it  is  remark- 
able that  our  losses  were  not  heavier.  I  do  not  know  why 
any  of  us  should  be  unscathed,  but  I  am  still  in  that  con- 
dition at  present  along  with  the  great  majority  of  the 
outfit. 

So  far  as  our  sector  is  concerned — and  we  are  informed 
that  the  same  holds  true  along  the  entire  front  of  the  drive 
— the  Hun  effort  was  wholly  abortive.  From  papers 
found  on  captured  Germans  we  know  that  their  schedule 
called  for  the  reaching  of  their  primary  local  objective  by 


440  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

8  A.M.  the  15th,  and  their  principal  local  objective  by  that 
evening,  whereas  they  did  not  even  advance  as  far  as  our 
plan  of  battle  had  allowed  for  their  coming  in  the  initial 
push.  For  the  present  we  are  simply  waiting  to  see 
whether  they  want  any  more,  trouncing  them  roundly  with 
artillery  in  the  meantime. 

Personally,  I  do  not  believe  it  possible  for  the  line  to  be 
broken  here,  or  anywhere  else  within  the  attack  area.  If 
the  French  were  caught  by  surprise  in  the  last  Hun  drive 
preceding  this  one,  they  assuredly  were  not  this  time. 
The  extent  and  precision  of  their  information  was  amazing. 
We  knew  the  exact  hour  when  the  Hun  barrage  was  to — 
and  did — drop.  And  the  one  we  touched  off  just  a  few 
minutes  in  anticipation  was  so  intense  that  it's  a  wonder 
to  me  it  left  any  room  in  the  air  for  the  Hun  projectiles  to 
get  by. 

Prisoners  taken  assert  that  our  artillery  fire  was  so  in- 
tense it  rendered  organization  for  the  initial  assault  im- 
possible. I  can  well  believe  this,  for  you  could  scarcely 
stroll  across  a  place  two  acres  square  before  the  show 
started  without  stumbling  on  a  battery  of  the  famous  75 's 
or  larger  guns  waiting — with  ammunition  corded  up  all 
around  and  all  their  data  for  the  area  they  were  to  fire  on — 
for  the  "supermen"  to  come  on.  Never  having  seen  it, 
you  could  not  believe  how  thoroughly  a  battery  of  75's 
can  be  concealed  right  out  in  the  middle  of  an  open  field 
before  your  eyes. 

For  the  present  my  company  is  sitting  very  comfort- 
ably in  a  nice  dry  dugout,  a  very  large  one,  two  stories 
underground,  waiting,  like  Mr.  Micawber,  "for  something 

to  turn  up."     The  men's  spirit  is  fine,  and  any  of  the 

Dutch  they  get  tangled  up  with  will  hardly  appear  later 
in  anything  but  casualty  lists.  The  way  the  men  stood 
for  the  first  time  an  artillery  fire — H.  E.  and  gas  shells 
mixed — which  may  well  be  described  as  withering  makes 


On  to  a  New  Area  441 

you  proud  to  be  an  American.  From  German  prisoners 
we  learn  that  the  readiness  of  the  American  soldier  to  take 
and  give  punishment  has  had  a  profound  effect  already  on 
the  private  soldiers  of  the  German  army,  who  are  amazed 
to  find  American  soldiers  on  every  front  they  attack,  and 
are  depressed  by  the  knowledge  of  our  numbers. 

If  the  Huns  are  held  in  their  present  attempt,  it  will  be 
much  more  surely  the  beginning  of  final  defeat  for  them 
than  was  Gettysburg  for  the  Confederacy. 

Our  division  is  somewhere  on  the  field  of  the  191 5  battle 
of  Champagne.     Much  love  to  Dad  and  yourself. 

QUINCY. 

Along  with  the  command,  withdrawing  the  Division  and 
of  the  same  date  as  the  preceding  letter,  came  other  orders 
assigning  the  regiment  to  a  new  area  of  battle,  for  which  it 
took  up  the  march  after  a  brief  rest. 

The  troops  in  the  dugouts  stiffered  intolerably  from  the 
foul  air  caused  by  their  crowded  condition  and  long  con- 
finement from  July  14  to  19.  To  escape  suffocation,  they 
were  sent  out  in  relays  for  fresh  air  in  the  midst  of  the  con- 
stant rain  of  high  explosive  and  gas  shells,  and  many 
casualties  were  due  to  this  unavoidable  exposure.  Mills 
makes  no  mention  of  this  in  his  account  of  the  battle,  but 
his  friend, Captain  L.  M.  C.  Adams,  after  his  return  from 
France,  described  the  suffering  of  the  men  in  reserve.  He 
also  spoke  of  the  iact  that  the  French  lost  almost  all  their 
artillery  horses  early  in  the  engagement.  With  the  deter- 
mination of  saving  the  guns  If  the  fortunes  of  war  went 
against  the  Allies,  the  horses  had  been  stationed  much 
nearer  the  front  than  usual.  They  were  spied  out  by 
enemy  airmen  who  signalled  the  range  to  the  German 
gunners  and  the  resulting  slaughter  was  frightful. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

A  Soldier's  Dream — ^After  the  Champagne  Defensive,  the  ChAteau- 
Thierry  Drive — Fulfillment  of  Fate  and  Supreme  Sacrifice — 
Asleep  in  France — Tributes. 

When  Mills's  trunks  came  home  to  his  parents,  these 
verses  were  found  in  one  of  them : 

RECOLLECTIONS  A.  E.  F. 

When  this  cruel  war  is  over,  and  w^e've  laid  aside  our  hates. 
When  we've  crossed  the  bounding  billow  to  our  loved  United 

States, 
When  I  sleep  in  thin  pajamas,  not  in  sweater,  socks  and  pants, 
I  will  think  about  the  billet  where  I  froze  in  Sunny  France. 

When  I  sit  all  snug  and  cozy,  and  it  isn't  any  dream 
That  I  hear  the  radiator  hissing  merrily  with  steam, 
When  the  house  is  warm  and  comfy,  this  idea  I'll  advance, 
I'll  forgive  the  heating  systems  that  are  all  the  vogue  in  France. 

When  I  watch  an  open  fire  eating  up  the  seasoned  logs, 
I'll  recall  the  sappy  sticks  fresh  cut  from  sodden  Gallic  bogs. 
When  I  hear  the  fire  crackle  as  I  watch  it  jump  and  dance, 
I'll  forget  the  smoking  fireplace  I  froze  beside  in  Sunny  France. 

A  soldier's  daydream!  But  Mills  never  came  home. 
His  next  battle  was  his  last.  He  lies  buried  in  France, 
and  his  parents  have  decided  after  consulting  the  depths 
of  their  hearts  that  he  would  choose  to  rest  there  himself, 
awaiting  the  last  trumpet  call. 

His  closing  days  and  the  circumstances  of  his  crowning 

442 


Acknowledged  Risk  443 

sacrifice  are  now  to  be  recorded.  Only  a  week  of  his  life 
is  left.  As  the  great  Champagne  defensive  battle  reached 
its  close  another  life  and  death  struggle  was  in  progress 
to  the  left  between  Soissons  and  Chateau-Thierry ;  it  was 
the  great  offensive  movement  generally  spoken  of  as  the 
Chateau-Thierry  drive,  which  was  the  beginning  of  the 
end  of  the  war.  The  French  were  forcing  back  the  Ger- 
man invaders,  and  reinforcements  of  fighting  troops  of 
high  quality  were  needed.  On  the  night  of  July  i8  at 
9  o'clock,  the  orders  reached  the  i68th  to  proceed  to  the 
new  area  of  danger.  The  regiment  marched  during  the 
dark  hours  and  the  19th  found  it  at  Camp  Attila  north  of 
Chalons,  where  it  was  allowed  to  rest  for  about  three  days. 
Mills  wrote  some  word  on  every  day  of  this  stay;  on  the 
last,  a  long  and  intensely  graphic  account  of  the  Cham- 
pagne combat.  To  the  very  end,  his  plan  of  dwelling  on 
the  peril  happily  escaped  without  allusion  to  what  might  be 
ahead  is  faithfully  maintained.  How  vain  the  precau- 
tion may  be  seen  from  the  fact  that  the  letter  of  July  22 
did  not  reach  New  York  until  August  23,  nearly  a  month 
after  his  death.  On  the  next  day,  August  24,  1918,  a 
telegram  from  the  War  Department  announced : 

Lt.  Quincy  S.  Mills  missing  in  action. 

In  these  last  letters,  however,  there  is  a  distinct  change 
of  tone.  The  note  of  hope  and  confidence  which  he  kept 
up  for  the  encouragement  of  his  father  and  mother  and 
anxious  friends  throughout  the  correspondence,  despite 
his  own  misgivings  revealed  to  his  comrades,  gives  way  to 
an  accentuation  of  the  risk  of  battle  coupled  with  a  new 
suggestion  of  consolation.  He  now  dwells  on  the  satis- 
faction to  his  own  soul  of  his  participancy  in  the  war,  no 
matter  what  the  cost,  and  he  appeals  to  his  parents'  pride 
and  patriotic  devotion   to   conquer   their  bereavement. 


444  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

Who  can  say  that,  as  he  penned  these  Hnes,  which  thrill 
with  emotion  as  deep  as  it  is  restrained,  a  premonitory 
shadow  did  not  rest  upon  his  spirit  ? 

July  19,  1918. 

Dear  Mother:  When  I  wrote  you  yesterday  I  told 
you  that  all  reports  indicated  that  I  was  having  the  privi- 
lege of  witnessing  a  part  of  what  would  prove  to  be  the 
German  Gettysburg.  To-day's  news  of  the  Allied  vic- 
tory in  the  Chateau-Thierry  region  seems  to  indicate  that 
this  was  an  even  truer  interpretation  than  I  realized. 

Chateau-Thierry  itself  seems  likely  to  prove  an  even 
greater  Sedan ,  with  victors  and  conquered  reversed  this  time. 

If  I  should  prove  "out  of  luck"  you  may  know  that  at 
any  rate  I  knew  that  Germany  was  beaten,  and  any 
civilized  human  being  would  die  happy  in  the  knowledge 
that  he  had  played  even  an  insignificant  part  toward 
bringing  this  to  pass. 

As  one  of  my  corporals  wrote  home  to  his  mother  to- 
day :  "  I  have  seen  war  at  its  worst  and  men  at  their  best " 
— and  I  will  add  that  it  has  been  worth  while  living  for. 

I  would  not  have  you  think  that  I  have  not  been  scared 
by  what  I  have  been  through,  but  the  truth  is  that  I  have 
been  worse  scared  by  thinking  about  it  afterward  than  I 
was  at  the  time. 

You  will  rejoice  to  know  that  General  Foch  has  formally 
credited  the  success  in  the  West  to  the  iron  resistance  of- 
fered to  the  Hun  onslaught  by  the  Allied  army  on  this  front. 

Love  and  lots  of  it.  QuiNCY. 

July  20,  1918. 

Dear  Mother:  The  Allied  success  grows,  and  as  it 
does,  so  does  my  elation. 

A  bunch  of  Hun  prisoners  who  passed  through  us  to  the 
rear  to-day  was  certainly  a  nondescript  lot :  A  few  husky 


Germans  Stunned  445 

young  men,  mixed  in  with  a  number  of  mere  youths  and 
men  above  age  and  physically  unfit. 

Here  are  some  French  forget-me-nots  I  picked  to-day. 
Much  love.  QuiNCY. 

July  21,  1918. 

Dear  Mother:  Many  of  the  French  think  that  the 
present  blow  will  win  the  war  speedily ;  none  of  them  fear 
any  further  drives  of  "frightful"  proportions  from  the 
Huns.  This  will  prove  the  last  stupendous  German 
effort,  they  say;  their  elation  now  that  the  safety  of  their 
beloved  Paris  is  assured  is  pathetic.  And  the  fervor  with 
which  they  bless  the  Americans  is  touching.  They  cer- 
tainly think  that  we  are  the  people. 

The  futility  of  the  Hun  effort  before  us  continues  to 
amaze  me  more  the  more  I  think  of  it.  They  had  alto- 
gether 225,000  men  on  a  very  short  front,  and  these  have 
been  shot  all  to  pieces.  Captiired  German  officers  con- 
fess themselves  stunned  by  the  ferocity  of  the  opposition 
they  encountered.  And  the  reasons  they  suggest  for  their 
own  failure  are  equally  amazing.  "We  hadn't  enough 
machine  guns. ' '  ' '  Our  artillery  was  insufficient. ' '  Think 
of  such  statements  from  Germans ! 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  defence  here  was  organ- 
ized as  Verdun  never  was.  And  the  thing  that  is  the  most 
encouraging  about  it  all  was  that  the  Huns  threw  every 
ounce  they  could  spare  against  this  sector,  as  it  was  the 
key  to  the  success  of  their  whole  plan. 

As  soon  as  I  have  the  opportunity  I  will  write  you  at 
length  about  the  events  of  the  past  week.     Love. 

QuiNCY. 

July  22,  1918. 

Dear  Mother:  Well,  I  have  been  waiting  all  week  for 
an  opportunity  to  write  you  a  real  letter,  but  as  day  has 


446  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

succeeded  unto  day  there  has  been  always  plenty  to  do. 
But  I  do  not  kick  at  that.  This  has  been  an  eventful 
week  in  world  history,  and  if  I  have  been  kept  busy  in- 
cidentally to  the  doing  of  big  things  I  am  proud  of  it — 
and  more  than  glad  that  I  have  been  here  to  be  kept  busy. 

To  begin  at  the  beginning :  The  last  Hun  effort  began 
officially  in  the  early  hours  of  July  15,  but  actually  the 
battle  started  before  midnight  of  the  evening  before, 
and  July  14  has  been  made  a  doubly  glorious  day  in  French 
history.  It  was  just  about  midnight  when  the  German 
bombardment  opened,  but  the  guns  that  were  to  decide 
the  fortunes  of  the  day  and  of  civilization,  the  75s  and  the 
155s  manned  by  French  and  American  gunners,  had  begun 
to  speak  in  a  mighty  chorus  half  an  hour  before  the  first 
Hun  lanyard  was  jerked.  And  it  was  this  initial  Allied 
artillery  fire  which  went  far  toward  disorganizing  the  Hun 
attack  and  breaking  up  the  drive  that  was  to  have  set  up 
the  Prussian  eagles  in  Paris.  Perhaps  there  was  to  have 
been  a  little  breathing  space  between  this  drive  and  the 
final  stupendous  onslaught  that  was  to  have  set  the  iron 
heel  on  the  capital  of  France,  but  this  was  avowedly  the 
beginning. 

And  to-day  the  flower  of  the  German  army  has  been 
blown  to  atoms ;  the  picked  divisions  that  were  to  prepare 
the  line  for  the  final  assault  on  Paris  are  as  completely 
destroyed  as  the  army  which  Napoleon  led  up  to  Moscow, 
and  the  army  which  was  to  have  rolled  over  the  Allied 
forces  to  the  Seine  is  broken  up,  sent  hither  and  there  to 
be  fed  in  to  stop  Foch's  offensives;  instead  of  gaining  even 
a  kilometer  von  Ludendorf  and  von  Hindenburg  have 
actually  lost  many,  along  with  many  thousand  prisoners 
and  many  guns. 

As  I  say,  it  was  about  midnight  when  the  Hun  bombard- 
ment started ;  I  can  assure  you  that  I  did  not  stop  to  look 
at  my  watch  when  the  long  sinister  roll  to  the  north  opened 


Destroyed  the  Huns  447 

and  the  shells  began  to  sing  and  burst  around  us.  Every- 
body had  been  aroused  half  an  hour  earlier  by  the  violence 
of  our  own  cannonade.  The  French  had  the  dope  even 
to  the  exact  minute  of  the  beginning  of  the  Hun  infantry 
assault,  4:45  A.M.,  and  they  forestalled  the  Hun  bombard- 
ment by  opening  with  our  batteries,  masked  in  every  hill 
and  hollow,  on  the  positions  where  the  German  infantry 
had  to  form  and  on  their  batteries — 300  of  them,  or  1200 
guns,  detailed  to  blow  us  off  the  map  in  our  sector. 

From  9  o'clock  on,  our  artillery  had  been  unusually 
active ;  at  about  1 1 130  the  whole  country  on  our  side  of  the 
line  was  a  sheet  of  flame  from  the  mouths  of  cannon.  And 
still  scarcely  a  shot  from  the  Huns.  That  is  their  way. 
They  save  it  all  up  and  turn  it  all  loose  at  once.  But  this 
time  they  saved  it  all  up  and  then  couldn't  turn  it  loose. 
It  had  seemed  that  our  guns  could  not  have  increased  their 
fire,  but  at  the  moment  that  the  Huns  fired  their  first  salvo 
from  the  whole  length  of  their  line  as  far  as  we  could  hear, 
from  the  east  to  the  west,  our  75s  and  155s  literally  leaped 
from  the  earth  and  began  to  tear  at  their  target  like  a 
tremendous  pack  of  ravenous  dogs  rending  their  quarry 
to  pieces. 

And  so  they  tore  and  tore  and  tore  all  night  and  into  the 
day  and  until  the  afternoon,  until  the  last  German  gun 
ceased  to  answer.  They  gassed  and  shelled  the  Hun  bat- 
teries until  at  times  the  fire  against  us  almost  died  away; 
they  blew  the  Hun's  attacking  Hnes  into  Eternity,  they 
blasted  the  shattered  divisions  that  tried  to  reorganize  for 
another  effort  toward  noon,  and  they  fired  point  blank 
into  the  thin  lines  that  made  the  final  hopeless  effort  to 
reach  our  positions. 

What  the  artillery  did  not  smash  the  machine  guns, 
lying  silent  in  concealed  positions  until  this  moment,  piled 
up  in  windrows  across  the  wire-strung  fields  like  rows  of 
human  grain  felled  by  a  gigantic  sickle.     The  Germans 


448  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

were  numbed ;  they  tasted  of  their  own  Frightf ulness  in  a 
proportion  that  they  had  never  dreamed  of  and  they  could 
not  realize  that  their  defeat  was  true.  Such  artillery  fire 
captured  officers  had  not  conceived  possible.  Listening 
to  our  artillery,  it  seemed  as  though  the  75s  were  firing 
clips  of  shells  like  those  loaded  into  machine  guns  and 
automatic  pistols.  And  it  was  on  Bastile  Day  that  the 
gunners  and  their  helpers  in  French  horizon  blue  and 
American  olive  drab  seized  the  first  shells  from  the 
mounds  stacked  up  like  cordwood  around  the  guns  that 
stood  with  open  breeches  ready  to  blow  Kultur  from  the 
face  of  the  earth,  pushed  them  home  and  opened  the  fight 
which,  so  far  as  they  knew,  might  have  ended  for  them  in 
a  vast  Thermopylae.  For  they  knew  only  that  the  Hun 
had  decided  that  the  sector  in  which  we  stood  was  the 
essential  key  to  his  own  movement;  they  knew  the  true 
frightfulness  of  the  concentrations  that  he  did  not  hesitate 
to  make  to  carry  such  a  point;  and  they  knew  that  they 
had  been  told  that  the  line  upon  which  we  stood  was  to  be 
held  at  all  costs,  even  to  the  last  man  and  the  last  gun. 
And,  shoulder  to  shoulder,  the  Americans  and  French 
stood  ready  to  make  the  sacrifice. 

But  it  is  now  all  a  tale  that  is  told.  The  war  is  not  yet 
ended  by  any  means.  There  may  be  many  months  yet 
of  bitter  fighting.  But  the  backbone  of  Prussian  aggres- 
sion has  been  broken.  The  German  armies  may  gain 
here  a  little  and  there  a  little.  But  the  fear  of  their  roll- 
ing, a  vast  tidal  wave  of  barbarism,  over  civilization,  is 
past  and  gone,  and  free  men  can  draw  their  breath  once 
more  and  know  that  the  world  is  to  continue  to  be  a  fit 
place  to  live  in. 

And  I — it  is  enough  for  me  to  know  that  I  have  played 
a  part,  however  small  and  insignificant,  in  this  epic  day, 
and  that,  whatever  the  sacrifice  I  might  have  been  called 
upon  to  make,  I  would  not  have  been  found  wanting. 


Died  Aiding  the  Wounded  449 

Which  brings  me  down  to  the  less  important  subject  of 
my  own  personal  experiences  incidental  to  the  battle. 
When  I  jumped  out  of  the  door  of  our  barrack  shack  it  was 
to  see  shells  cracking  all  around,  to  feel  them  as  well  as  hear 
them  and  see  them  flashing  Hke  local  Hghtning  bursts  in 
our  fir  grove  and  in  the  woods  all  around.  Branches  of 
trees  were  crashing  and  the  air  was  full  of  the  hum  of 
pieces  of  high  explosive  shells.  And  just  as  I  got  outside 
the  gas  alarm  sounded.  You  can  imagine  how  pleasant 
it  was  groping  in  a  gas  helmet  through  the  darkness  to  the 
dugout.  The  way  lay  down  a  little  narrow-gauge  railway 
track  used  for  hauling  munitions,  and  twice  on  the  way 
shells  burst  so  close  that  they  threw  dirt  all  over  me,  but 
somehow  I  got  there.  Then  it  was  necessary  to  shepherd 
the  men  of  my  platoon,  guide  them  to  the  stairway  of  the 
dugout  and  get  them  down.  Why  we  were  not  all  knocked 
off  as  we  stumbled  around  in  the  darkness  God  only  knows, 
but  I  had  not  a  single  man  of  my  platoon  killed,  although 
several  sustained  painful  wounds.  All  things  considered, 
the  losses  of  the  companies  of  my  battalion  in  dead  and 
wounded  were  amazingly  slight.  Not  a  man  was  killed 
in  getting  to  the  dugouts  but  several  were  wounded,  and 
our  dead  met  their  end  in  carrying  these  wounded  to  the 
hospital ! 

In  this  regard,  I  blame  higher  authority,  which  knew  the 
hour  when  it  was  believed  the  Huns  would  start  raising 
hell,  for  not  having  had  every  man  underground  long  be- 
fore things  commenced.  This  lack  of  judgment  and  fore- 
sight is  just  the  sort  of  thing  that  I  have  been  so  hot  about 
all  the  time.  But  this  incident  is  past,  and  enough  of 
criticism  for  the  present. 

The  men  being  packed  into  the  shafts  and  on  the  stair- 
ways of  the  dugout,  I  stood  in  the  trench  at  the  head  of 
the  stairway  until  daylight.  The  gas  shells  fell  only  fit- 
fully, so  that  most  of  the  time  we  could  keep  our  masks 


450  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

off,  fortunately.  The  absence  of  gas,  with  which  the 
Huns  usually  drench  the  reserve  positions,  amazed  me 
more  and  more  as  the  night  passed.  One  hit  less  than  ten 
feet  from  the  trench  at  the  head  of  the  dugout  stairway, 
but  all  of  us  had  our  masks  on  before  the  stuff  got  to  us. 
Not  until  the  battle  subsided  did  I  comprehend  the  reason 
for  the  absence  of  gas.  Orders  found  on  killed  and  cap- 
tured German  officers  showed  that  they  were  to  have  been 
in  Suippes,  3^2  kilometers  behind  us,  by  8  a.m.  the  morn- 
ing of  the  15th,  and  in  Chalons-sur-Marne,  22  kilometers 
from  the  Hun  starting  point,  by  night.  The  Huns  did 
not  wish  to  impede  their  prospective  rapid  progress  by 
running  into  their  own  gas,  so  they  shot  over  just  enough 
to  m^ake  us  put  on  our  masks,  and  thus  increase  the  con- 
fusion and  their  chance  of  getting  us  with  high  explosives. 
But  thanks  to  a  brisk  breeze  the  little  they  did  put  over 
was  quickly  dispelled,  and  we  had  to  wear  our  masks 
hardly  at  all.  I  have  not  heard  of  a  single  gas  casualty  in 
the  sector. 

But  after  looking  at  the  fashion  in  which  they  ploughed 
up  the  whole  surface  of  the  camp  it  is  more  and  more  of  a 
mystery  to  me  why  we  did  not  suffer  heavily  from  shell 
fire.  Not  a  tree  but  had  been  gouged  by  a  shell  fragment, 
and  the  ground  in  our  grove  was  literally  carpeted  with 
fir  branches.  Of  course  all  the  shells  did  not  drop  at  once 
while  we  were  passing  through ;  had  they  done  so,  it  would 
have  been  our  finish.  They  fell  during  a  twelve  horn- 
bombardment  ;  lucky  for  us  they  were  scattered ! 

To  show  how  utterly  the  Huns  failed  in  their  scheme  of 
rapid  advance,  they  did  not  penetrate  and  establish  them- 
selves closer  than  i  ,000  yards  to  our  intermediary  line — 
and  a  splendid  one  it  was — selected  ahead  of  the  one  for 
our  stand  to  the  finish.  And  then  the  French  counter- 
attacked the  next  day  and  drove  them  out  of  the  area 
back  to  our  front  line  that  they  had  bought  at  such  terrible 


Comrades  in  Valor  451 

cost.  At  a  few  points  the  Huns  did  manage  to  penetrate 
to  our  intermediary  position  even  in  the  face  of  machine 
guns  planted  every  50  yards — think  of  it! — but,  each 
time,  they  were  hurled  out  instantaneously.  At  one  point 
they  thus  reached  the  Alabama  regiment's  intermediary 
position,  but  two  companies  of  the  Alabamans,  singing 
"When  the  roll  is  called  up  yonder  we'll  be  there,"  struck 
them  like  a  hammer  of  steel — and  did  not  bring  back  a 
single  prisoner  from  the  mass  they  literally  picked  up  on 
the  points  of  their  bayonets  and  pitchforked  back  to  the 
1 ,000  yard  limit.  Indeed  prisoners  were  desired  on  the  Ala- 
bama front,  and  a  lieutenant  finally  got  one  back — but 
he  had  to  throw  himself  in  front  of  the  Hun  to  keep  him 
from  being  bayoneted,  and  even  then  the  mad  Alabamans 
got  him  through  the  leg.  At  another  point  the  Huns  got 
close  to  the  New  York  regiment's  (the  old  Sixty-ninth) 
intermediary  position  to  make  a  lunge  for  it,  but  the  New 
Yorkers  leaped  from  the  trench  with  a  yell,  caught  the 
Boche  between  our  trench  and  our  wire  and  bayoneted 
every  one  without  themselves  losing  a  man. 

Our  division  was  put  in  fast  company  for  the  fight — 
Blue  Devils  on  one  side  of  us  and  Algerians  on  the  other — 
and  it  more  than  justified  its  right  to  the  honor.  No  won- 
der that  when  a  French  soldier  meets  an  American  his 
hand  comes  up  in  salute  and  he  ejaculates  from  a  face 
wreathed  in  smiles,  ' '  Camarade ! ' ' 

After  the  action  quieted  dov/n  on  the  afternoon  of  the 
15th  with  only  our  guns  working — they  continued  to  bark 
savagely  for  another  12  hours  after  the  Boche  artillery 
quit — you  can  imagine  our  grim  hours  of  waiting,  wonder- 
ing if  the  Hun  would  come  back  at  us  with  a  mightier  effort 
than  ever  and  drown  us  in  gas.  All  night  we  waited  with 
hardly  a  Boche  shell  falling,  and  our  own  guns  working 
less  incessantly,  but  with  the  sinister  roll  of  the  battle 
still  rumbling  away  to  our  right  and  left,  particularly 


452  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

to  the  left  in  the  direction  of  Rheims.  And  then  came  the 
news  of  Foch's  counter-attack,  brilHant  in  its  conception 
and  masterly  in  execution,  and  men  wearied  by  two 
nights'  vigil  were  electrified  in  a  second.  It  would  have 
made  your  heart  leap  to  be  an  American  to  have  seen  the 
blaze  in  my  Sergeant  Scott's  eyes  as  he  said  to  me: 

"Lieutenant,  we're  just  a-rarin'  to  go  and  get  them ! " 

And  they  were,  too.  They  would  have  stuck  through  hell 
on  the  last  stand  position,  but  their  first  taste  of  victory 
was  sweet  and  they  wanted  to  get  out  and  at  their 
enemies.  Scott  has  been  recommended  for  an  officers' 
training  school,  by  the  way,  and  will  go  soon  and  get  his 
commission.  See  how  my  judgment  has  been  vindicated. 
Koester  has  just  been  commissioned  at  one  of  these  schools 
and  sent  to  another  division  than  ours. 

Then  came  the  humorous  side  of  war.  On  the  body  of 
a  Hun  messenger  was  found  a  message  to  his  commander 
relating  how  he  had  "swept  over  the  enemy"  with  his 
detachment  of  five  tanks  and  was  "pursuing  them  in  the 
direction  of  Somme-Suippes."  The  particular  humor  of 
this  message  was  that  according  to  the  Boche  officer  he 
had  run  his  Juggernauts  right  over  us.  You  should  have 
heard  the  men  laugh !  The  tanks  had  all  been  shot  to 
pieces.  There  was  another  shout  over  the  yarn  about  a 
Boche  prisoner  brought  in  on  the  morning  of  the  i6th  who 
was  reported  to  have  inquired  as  they  started  marching 
him  down  the  road  how  soon  they  would  reach  Chalons. 
He  explained,  according  to  the  stoiy,  that  the  Kaiser  had 
decreed  when  they  started  the  drive  that  they  were  not  to 
eat  until  they  reached  Chalons  and  that  he  was  pretty 
hungry. 

The  prisoners  I  wrote  you  of  as  having  been  marched 
by  here  were  a  sorry  lot,  most  of  them  men  of  50  and  boys 
of  16  in  uniforms  baggy  and  out  of  all  proportion  to  the 
sizes  of  the  wearers.    You  will  be  glad  to  know  that  our 


An  Airplane  Memento  453 

dog  Bum  survived  gloriously  to  dash  out  with  us  to  view 
the  parade  of  Germans  and  that  he  nearly  barked  his  head 
off  at  them.  The  blood  curdHng  yells  let  out  by  our  men 
as  they  ran  toward  the  column  caused  the  French  cavalry 
escort  to  close  in  on  all  sides,  and  the  Huns  appeared 
almighty  glad  to  have  them  there. 

The  later  news  establishes  that  the  Allied  victory  was 
not  as  overwhelming  as  we  had  at  first  been  led  to  believe 
— in  an  army,  news  of  victory  or  defeat  is  magnified  a 
thousandfold  by  the  wind  of  rumor  which  brings  it.  It 
will  hardly  be  a  German  Sedan,  but  it  is  a  German  Gettys- 
burg, and  more.  It  would  not  surprise  me  if  this  blow  to 
German  prestige  should  send  Austria  reeling  from  her 
feet.  And  the  effect  in  Germany  itself  will  be  far  more 
far-reaching  than  on  the  battlefront,  for  the  greatest 
menace  that  the  German  war  lords  have  erected  for  them- 
selves is  the  necessity  of  proving  themselves  always 
victorious  to  their  own  people. 

In  the  meantime,  here  we  are  having  a  breathing  space 
back  from  the  noise  of  battle  before  being  used  again 
where  we  can  do  the  most  good.  There  is  plenty  doing 
here,  though.  For  instance,  I  inclose  a  piece  from  the 
wing  of  a  Hun  airplane  that  I  saw  brought  down  by  two 
Frenchmen  reeling  out  of  space  from  a  height  far  beyond 
the  reach  of  the  naked  eye  whence  the  noise  of  the  battling 
machine  guns  had  come  to  us  only  as  a  faint  "pit-pat" 
scarcely  to  be  noticed.  Unfortunately  the  two  Boches  in 
the  plane  were  not  killed,  but  the  crews  of  three  other 
planes  bagged  here  by  the  French  yesterday  were  killed, 
as  they  should  have  been,  either  in  battle  or  in  crashing  to 
earth.  The  fabric  from  this  airplane  wing  is  another 
evidence  of  the  Hun's  shortage  of  raw  materials,  for  it  is  of 
linen,  not  silk,  the  ideal  stuff  for  such  service.  Do  not 
get  the  bit  of  airplane  cloth  close  to  a  light,  or  it  will  go 
up  like  celluloid. 


454  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

I  received  one  letter  from  you  the  evening  of  the  14th, 
just  as  our  guns  started  to  booming,  and  two  more  to-day. 
Thanks  for  the  Childe  Roland.  There  is  more  to  write  but 
no  time  at  present.  I  know  that  New  York  is  wild  with 
excitement  and  joy  over  the  victory,  and  is  justly  proud  of 
the  part  that  America  has  played  in  it.  One  of  our  divi- 
sions that  acquitted  itself  with  distinction  had  never  been 
under  shell  fire  before.  Active  operations  are  likely  to 
continue  for  some  time,  I  believe,  but  not  with  any  Hun 
menace.     Much  love  to  Dad  and  yourself. 

QUINCY. 

Here  are  a  piece  of  Queen  Anne's  lace  and  a  common 
ordinary  clover  blossom  which  came  from  right  outside 
the  billet  where  I  am  sleeping  now.  The  lace  was  plenti- 
ful around  school,  but  since  then  I  had  seen  none  until  I 
arrived  here. 

When  all  this  is  over  I  may  feel  like  a  little  vacation, 
and  a  vacation  in  France.  I  am  in  love  with  this  country 
and  its  people.  And  now  I  suppose  you  will  be  thinking 
some  of  them  must  be  in  love  with  me.  Well,  some  of 
them  do  think  pretty  well  of  me.     Love.  Q. 

The  1 68th  broke  camp  on  the  night  of  July  22,  marched 
through  Chalons — all  the  marches  at  this  period  were 
made  at  night — and  at  4  A.M.  of  the  23rd  entrained  at 
Coolus.  A  day  was  spent  in  a  railroad  journey  which 
passed  through  the  suburbs  of  Paris,  so  that  the  men 
could  see  the  Eiffel  Tower  from  the  car  windows,  but 
which  ended  at  night  at  Changis  near  Meaux,  about 
75  miles  almost  due  west  of  their  starting  place.  Here 
there  was  a  rest  of  about  twenty-four  hours  and  here  Mills 
and  Lieutenant  Pearsall  were  notified  that  they  were  to  be 
promoted  to  be  first  lieutenants.  Mills  used  the  occasion 
to  write  one  more  note,  the  last  he  sent  home,  probably  the 


His  Last  Word  455 

last  lines  he  ever  put  on  paper.  It  reached  his  parents  a 
month  later,  on  August  23,  along  with  his  letter  of  July  22, 
written  two  days  before.     Here  it  is : 

July  24,  1918. 

Dear  Mother:  I  have  been  informed  to-day  that  I 
have  been  recommended  for  promotion,  and  that  the 
recommendation  is  likely  to  be  acted  on  any  day. 

The  situation  continues  highly  favorable  for  the  Allied 
armies  and  you  should  be  very  happy. 

Much  love  to  Dad  and  yourself.  Quincy. 

At  9  o'clock  on  the  night  of  the  24th,  the  men  were 
loaded  upon  auto  trucks  and  went  rolling  away  north 
over  the  inky  roads.  They  travelled  all  night,  now 
progressing,  now  halting  as  the  way  was  clear  or 
obstructed.  They  dozed  or  struggled  to  keep  awake. 
Silence,  for  the  most  part,  fell  upon  them.  What  strange 
communings  with  their  inward  selves  there  must  have 
been  upon  that  weird  and  fateful  progress  through  the 
dark  into  the  dreary  dawn  of  a  day  of  threatened  death 
and  horror. 

The  trucks  halted  in  the  early  light,  just  outside  Epieds, 
a  small  town  in  the  Bois  de  Fere  in  the  Department  of  the 
Aisne  northeast  of  and  not  far  from  Chateau-Thierry. 
The  stiffened  and  tired  men  dismounted  in  a  soggy,  drizzly 
atmosphere  into  a  battle-desolated  country.  The  great 
drive  north,  of  the  Allies,  was  in  progress.  Desolation  and 
glory  were  stalking  hand  in  hand  as  the  Germans  re- 
treated, bitterly  contesting  every  foot  of  the  ground  over 
which  they  had  swept  as  ruthless  invaders  four  years 
before.  The  Twenty-sixth,  the  New  England  Division, 
had  been  forcing  back  the  enemy  for  many  days,  covering 
itself  with  honor.  The  Rainbow  Division  was  now  to 
relieve  its  decimated  and  exhausted  units.     Mills  and  his 


456  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

comrades  literally  descended  from  their  rude  transport 
wagons  into  the  thick  of  battle  on  this  grey,  damp,  cheer- 
less morning  of  July  25.  Alighting,  they  were  formed 
up  and  ate  a  mouthful  of  breakfast  from  their  emergency 
supply,  which  they  carried  individually.  In  such  hurried 
movements,  the  camp  kitchens  could  not  keep  up  with 
the  Division.  Soon  the  men  were  marched  forward  into 
some  woods  two  miles  to  the  north  of  Epieds.  Outposts 
were  thrown  forward  and,  as  the  Germans  were  shelling 
the  tract  and  searching  it  with  machine  gun  fire,  holes 
were  dug  into  which  the  men  crept  for  protection.  The 
woods  were  torn  by  shot  and  shell,  and  the  earth  was  a 
wilderness. 

At  this  time  and  place,  trench  warfare  had  been 
abandoned;  the  fighting  was  relatively  in  the  open.  It 
consisted  of  alternate  dashes  forward  by  the  American 
troops,  driving  the  Germans  before  them,  and  pauses  to 
recover  breath,  reorganize  the  units  and  consolidate  the 
hold  on  the  newly  gained  ground.  The  advance  line 
where  held  by  the  i68th  had  reached  the  edge  of  a  wood, 
part  of  the  F6ret  de  Fere,  and  to  the  north  lay  a  cleared 
rectangle  about  one  kilometer  or  perhaps  250  acres  in 
extent,  the  Croix  Rouge  farm,  where  Prince  Eitel  Fritz  had 
made  his  headquarters  for  many  weeks  in  the  riotous  days 
of  the  expected  seizure  of  Paris .  The  trees  were  sadly  torn 
by  the  storm  of  shot  and  shell  of  previous  days ;  the  farm 
and  portions  of  the  wood  were  still  strongly  held  by  the 
Germans  and  the  fighting  across  them  had  been  terrible. 

On  the  25th,  however,  as  the  AlHes  held  the  aggressive 
and  were  quiescent  on  account  of  the  exchange  of  divisions, 
there  was  no  incident  to  vary  the  more  or  less  continuous 
bombardment.  The  early  part  of  the  26th  was  equally 
stagnant.  At  3  o'clock,  however,  the  order  came  to 
renew  the  attack.  The  First  and  Second  Battalions  of 
the  1 68th  were  engaged  in  it,  the  Third  being  in  support. 


Consummation  457 

The  Americans  drove  the  Germans  back  with  severe  rifle 
fire  and  threatened  bayonet  charge.  But  the  resistance 
was  firm ;  every  foot  of  ground  was  contested.  The  Prus- 
sian Guard  was  holding  the  enemy's  Hne.  One  of  the 
bloodiest  struggles  of  the  war  developed.  Hour  after 
hour  it  went  on.  Major  Stanley's  Second  Battalion 
manoeuvred,  fired,  took  cover,  rushed  forward,  took  cover 
again,  always  moving  on  toward  the  Croix  Rouge  farm 
road,  its  objective. 

Around  4  o'clock,  Company  G  was  ordered  to  back  up 
Company  F  in  an  attack  to  be  made  across  an  open  field 
of  oats.  Both  were  in  the  wood  at  its  edge ;  the  Germans 
began  a  concentrated  shell  fire  and  there  was  no  shelter 
except  the  scattered  trees.  "We  could  do  nothing  but 
trust  in  God,"  writes  Captain  Frank  B.  Younkin,  the 
commandant  of  Company  G,  describing  the  moment. 

But  Mills  had  the  impulse  to  act.  His  constant  solici- 
tude for  the  safety  of  his  men  was  strong  upon  him .  Alone , 
he  went  forward  to  the  edge  of  the  timber,  in  face  of  the 
fire,  vainly  seeking  for  some  sort  of  cover  to  which  he 
might  guide  his  platoon.  He  found  none  and  gave  up 
the  search.  It  was  now  between  4:30  and  5  o'clock.  He 
turned  back  toward  the  advancing  line  and  had  gone  a 
distance  of  some  thirty -five  yards  when  a  German  artillery 
shell  hit  the  ground  within  a  few  feet  of  him  and  exploded. 
Fragments  of  it  struck  him  and  he  was  instantly  killed. 


It  was  a  woful  day  for  Company  G,  that  26th  of  July. 
Every  officer  in  it  was  hit  except  Lieutenant  Frank  S. 
Pearsall.  Lieutenant  Rubel  was  killed  at  the  same 
moment  with  Mills  by  a  fragment,  probably,  of  the 
same  shell.     Seventy-two  members  of  the    i68th  gave 


458  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

their  lives  that  terrible  afternoon  between  3  o'clock  and 
sundown ;  more  than  five  hundred  were  wounded. 

The  regiment  still  advanced  after  Mills  fell.  It  swept 
on  past  his  body  to  the  objective  set  for  it.  Next  day  the 
Third  Battalion  took  the  lead,  reached  the  Ourcq  and 
crossed  the  river  under  cover  of  the  mist  at  daybreak.  By 
noon,  it  carried  the  crest  of  Hill  212.  The  Hill  was  taken 
and  retaken  at  fearful  cost  in  life.  Only  on  the  3 1  st ,  when 
reinforcements  came  up,  could  the  line  push  forward. 
Then  it  went  on  through  Sergy  to  the  heights  and  forests 
north  of  Nestles  and  later  to  the  Vesle  and  to  Fismes. 
The  battle  was  the  most  trying  and  costly  that  the  Iowa 
regiment  engaged  in.  In  the  seven  days'  fighting  from 
July  24  to  the  31st,  it  lost  1482  men,  or  fully  fifty  per  cent 
of  its  effective  strength  at  that  time.  Of  these,  227  men 
were  left  sleeping  under  crosses  at  the  Croix  Rouge  farm, 
on  Hill  212  and  on  the  banks  of  the  Ourcq. 


On  the  morning  of  the  27th,  when  the  Second  Battalion 
was  withdrawn  to  the  support  positions,  Mills's  comrades 
went  out  to  find  his  body.  Lieutenant  Pearsall  had  seen 
him  and  Lieutenant  Rubel  dead  the  evening  before,  but 
was  guided  to  the  exact  spot  where  he  lay  by  an  officer  of 
the  167th  Regiment.  He  searched  the  clothing  but  found 
nothing  of  value,  so  he  returned  all  the  articles  to  the 
pockets.  Mills's  revolver,  wrist  watch  and  binoculars 
were  not  found. 

A  grave  was  dug  practically  where  he  fell.  Rubel  was 
laid  near  him,  and  about  them  were  seven  of  their  men 
who  had  fallen.  They  were  all  wrapped  in  their  blankets 
— naturally  no  coffins  were  available — and  laid  in  the 
earth  that  they  had  consecrated  with  their  blood,  rever- 


Days  of  Torture  459 

ently  but  without  ceremony.  It  will  be  seen  that  the 
account  cabled  to  New  York  and  cited  in  The  Evening 
Sun's  editorial  given  at  the  beginning  of  this  book  was 
erroneous  in  some  details.  But  in  fact,  Sergeant  Hartzell, 
who  was  aid  to  Chaplain  Robb  of  the  Regiment,  carefully 
noted  the  location  and  marking  of  all  the  graves.  Mills's 
was  25-A,  on  the  map  known  as  "  Conde-en-Brie."  How- 
ever, he  no  longer  lies  there.  His  body  has  been  trans- 
ferred to  the  Martyrs'  Cemetery  near  Chateau-Thierry, 
where  it  lies  in  a  section  at  present  used  entirely  for  the 
dead  of  the  Forty-second  Division.  According  to  a 
notification  sent  to  his  father  and  signed  by  Colonel 
Charles  C.  Pierce  of  the  Quartermaster's  Corps,  acting  as 
Chief  of  the  Graves  Registration  service,  and  dated 
December  27,  191 9,  the  new  grave  is  No.  27,  Section  H, 
Plot  I,  American  Cemetery  608,  at  Seringes-et-Nesles, 
Aisne.  It  is  near,  but  somewhat  north  of  the  locality 
where  he  was  killed.  His  father  and  mother  have  decided 
that  he  shall  rest  there.  They  believe  that  this  would 
have  been  his  wish.  They  have  formally  advised  the  War 
Department  to  this  effect. 

Not  until  August  24 — only  two  days  less  than  a  month 
after  Mills's  death — was  any  word  received  by  his  family 
from  the  Government.  Through  some  strange  compli- 
cation, the  news  then  cabled  to  the  War  Department  was 
that  Lieutenant  Mills  was  missing  in  action;  his  parents 
were  so  notified  on  August  24,  and  the  newspapers  pub- 
lished the  announcement.  Terrible  anxiety,  and  uncer- 
tainty more  torturing  than  the  finality  of  death  were 
suffered  in  consequence.  Inquiries  in  all  directions 
proved  unavailing  until  strong  newspaper  pressure  was 
brought  to  bear;  then,  on  September  3,  The  Sun's  War 
Correspondent  in  France  cabled  The  Evening  Sun  office: 
"Lieutenant  Quincy  S.  Mills  killed  by  high  explosive 
shell  near  Epieds  on  July  26."     On  September  22,  the 


46o  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

fatal  news  was  officially  communicated  to  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Mills. 

In  the  interval,  letters  from  him  constantly  arrived, 
keeping  alive  vain  hopes.  They  had  been  written  and 
despatched  prior  to  July  26,  but  it  was  hard  to  realize 
that  these  vivid  utterances  were  as  if  from  the  dead.  The 
reasons  for  the  delay  in  notification  of  his  death  are 
plausible  if  not  satisfying.  From  the  beginning  of  Foch's 
offensive,  the  casualty  lists  were  so  heavy  that  the  War 
Department  was  always  weeks  behind  with  the  announce- 
ments. This  does  not  explain,  however,  the  blunder  in 
the  first  message  as  to  Mills's  fate.  The  notification  of 
Lieutenant  Rubel's  death  did  not  reach  his  family  for  a 
week  after  the  first  message  to  Mills's,  though  both  men 
fell  at  the  same  moment. 

In  the  days  of  agonized  suspense  as  to  her  son's  fate, 
Mrs.  Mills  wrote  to  Colonel  Roosevelt,  asking  if  he  could 
aid  in  securing  certain  information  as  to  Quincy.  This 
was  the  reply  he  sent  • 

Office  of  The  Kansas  City  Star, 

Theodore  Roosevelt,  New  York  Office, 

347  Madison  Avenue, 
September    3,    191 8. 

My  dear  Mrs.  Mills:  I  sympathize  most  deeply  with 
you.  Believe  me,  I  would  do  anything  in  my  power  to  help 
you,  but  there  is  absolutely  nothing  I  can  do.  I  could  not  do 
it  for  my  own  son  Quentin  when  he  was  killed ;  I  was  not  able 
to  do  it  for  the  scores  of  mothers  and  fathers  who  have  appealed 
to  me  as  you  have.  In  the  case  of  Quentin  I  made  no  inquiry 
whatever,  for  there  was  nothing  I  could  do.  In  the  other 
cases  all  I  can  advise  is  to  communicate  instantly  through  your 
local  Red  Cross  branch,  with  the  Red  Cross.  They  have  a 
special  bureau  which  looks  after  cases  like  that  of  your  gallant 
son. 

I  am  exceedingly  sorry  that  I  am  powerless  to  help  you  in 


Farewell  Letters  461 

your  great  affliction.     I  need  not  say  to  you  how  deeply  I 

sympathize  with  you. 

Faithfully  yours, 

Theodore  Roosevelt. 


In  May,  1919,  when  the  first  of  Mills's  trunks  to  arrive 
from  France  was  delivered  to  his  parents  by  the  Effects 
Bureau  of  the  War  Department,  there  was  found  in  the 
tray  a  large  unsealed  envelope  on  which  was  written : 

In  case  of  my  death,  the  inclosed  letters  are  to  be  mailed 
to  the  persons  to  whom  they  are  addressed. 

QuiNCY  S.  Mills. 

Only  one  letter  remained.  There  had  been  two  but  a 
memorandum  explained  that  he  had  mailed  one  to  its 
destination.  It  seems  strange  that  his  instructions 
regarding  the  other  were  disregarded.  However  such  is 
the  fact.  The  letter  was  addressed  to  his  mother ;  it  was  a 
word  of  farewell.  It  is  undated  and  affords  no  precise 
clue  as  to  when  or  where  it  was  written.  From  the 
expressions  as  to  his  brief  experience  in  the  army  and  to 
the  uncertain  outcome  of  the  conflict,  Mrs.  Mills  deduces 
that  it  was  penned  to  forestall  eventualities  shortly  before 
Mills  first  entered  the  trenches  in  February,  19 18,  leaving 
his  baggage  behind  him  and  facing  the  peril  which  ulti- 
mately was  realized  in  his  death.  That  this  deduction 
was  correct  has  since  been  proved  by  information  received 
from  Lieutenant  Pearsall  and  Captain  Adams  stating 
that  the  baggage  of  the  i68th  was  stored  in  warehouses 
behind  the  lines  when  the  soldiers  went  into  the  trenches 
in  February,  and  that  they  never  again  had  access  to  their 
trunks. 

In  its  noble  devotion  of  himself  to  the  cause  his  country 
had  espoused,  in  its  lofty  appeal  on  grounds  of  spiritual 


4^2  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

duty  for  acquiescence  by  his  parents  in  the  decree  of  fate, 
this  is  the  crowning  utterance  of  a  life  of  high  ideals : 

My  dear  Mother:  I  am  writing  you  here  a  letter 
which  may  very  well  be  made  too  long  and  cannot  very 
well  be  too  short,  for  farewells  are  best  when  not  long 
drawn  out. 

For  yourself,  I  would  have  you  bear  in  mind  the  im- 
mortal philosophy  placed  by  Maeterlinck  in  the  mouths 
of  Mytyl  and  Tytyl:  "Where  are  the  dead?"  "There 
are  no  dead ! "  In  my  brief  experience  in  the  army  no 
truth  has  been  driven  home  to  me  so  forcibly  as  this. 
Live  by  it. 

For  myself,  I  would  have  you  believe  that  whatever  end 
I  met,  I  met  it  with  an  even  mind,  constant  in  the  con- 
clusion that  I  would  rather  have  gone  out  to  this  war  and 
not  come  back  than  not  to  have  gone  at  all.  My  chief 
regret,  if  I  may  not  live  to  see  the  end,  is  that  I  may  not 
witness  the  triumph  of  right  over  wrong  in  this  the  most 
terrible  eruption  of  the  forces  of  reaction  in  the  history  of 
man.  That  these  forces  can  triumph  is  unthinkable;  if 
they  are  to  win  I  would  rather  die  now  than  witness  the 
victory. 

It  is  a  great  comfort,  greater  than  I  can  tell  you,  to 
realize  that  for  the  future  you  and  Dad  will  have  sufficient 
of  this  world's  goods  to  assure  you  against  worry.  I 
would  advise  you  to  realize  on  your  property  and  utilize 
the  proceeds  so  that  you  may  both  get  the  most  out  of  life, 
and  to  do  this  at  once.  I  regret  that  you  are  too  prone  to 
grieve  over  matters  which  are  rendered  only  worse  by  re- 
pining, and  trust  that  you  will  have  the  greatness  of  spirit 
in  this  trial  to  see  to  it  that  your  satisfaction  at  having 
had  a  son  to  give  to  such  a  service  overbalances  your 
sorrow  at  having  lost  a  son.  In  a  case  where  there  was 
only  one  thing  for  the  son  to  do  there  should  be  no  room 


His  Coloners  Praise  463 

for  vain  regrets  on  the  part  of  his  mother.  Remember  me 
but  do  not  become  morbid  over  me.  That  would  be  the 
greatest  dishonor  you  could  do  to  my  memory. 

With  more  love  than  I  can  express  for  Dad  and  yourself. 

QUINCY. 

During  the  period  of  uncertainty  as  to  their  son's  fate, 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Mills  wrote  many  letters  to  officers  of  the 
1 68th  Regiment,  asking  for  information.  The  answers 
came  with  words  of  praise  and  consolation,  which  though 
they  could  not  heal  the  wound  in  their  hearts  yet  helped  to 
soothe  the  pain.  Colonel  Matthew  A.  Tinley,  the  com- 
mander of  the  regiment  at  this  time,  under  date  of  Oc- 
tober 29,  after  expressing  his  regret  at  the  suspense  they 
had  endiired,  went  on : 

It  was  my  pleasure  to  know  your  son,  and  my  regret  that  I 
did  not  know  him  better.  It  is  useless  for  me  to  attempt  to 
tell  his  mother  of  the  clean,  fine  qualities  he  possessed,  but  it 
will  be  gratifying  to  you  to  know  that  others  recognized  and 
appreciated  those  qualities.  Your  sacrifice  in  this  struggle  has 
been  supreme,  and  we  can  only  hope  that  the  end  gained  will 
be  commensurate  with  the  price  paid. 

To  the  end  Quincy  did  his  duty  as  you  would  expect,  man- 
fully and  cheerfully.  He  met  his  fate  leading  his  men,  and  his 
death  was  instantaneous.  Quincy  and  twelve  of  his  men  were 
buried  near  together;  in  all  about  twenty-five  of  our  regiment 
are  grouped  there  awaiting  the  hour  for  return.  Your  son 
gave  his  life  for  the  welfare  of  his  fellowmen,  and  he  is  now 
enjojdng  the  -^eward  of  a  life  well  spent,  duty  done  and  his 
labors  complete.  We  who  are  left  behind,  very  naturally  and 
selfishly,  regret  his  going  and  long  for  his  return. 

There  is  nothing  we  can  say  to  lessen  your  sorrow,  Mrs. 
Mills,  but  we  do  want  you  to  know  that  we  share  it,  and  like 
you  await  the  hour  when  his  loss  will  become  a  sweet  memory 
with  the  sting  softened  by  time. 


4^4  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

Major  Claude  M.  Stanley,  who  commanded  the  Second 
Battalion,  wrote  on  August  21,  confirming  the  official 
notification.     He  added : 

I  am  glad  to  tell  you  that  I  am  proud  to  have  known 
Lieutenant  Mills,  and  to  have  had  him  as  an  officer  in  my 
battalion.  He  was  a  fine  officer,  and  faithfully  performed  his 
duties  to  the  end.  He  was  killed,  instantly,  on  the  after- 
noon of  July  26  when  this  battalion  was  making  an  attack  on  a 
place  known  as  Red  Cross  Farm,  northeast  of  Chateau-Thierry. 
I  saw  him  only  a  few  minutes  before  we  went  into  the  attack. 
He  was  cheerful  and  happy.  He  and  Lieutenant  Rubel  of 
Co.  G  were  killed  together,  and  were  only  a  few  yards  from 
where  I  was  at  the  time. 

I  feel  that  my  loss  of  him  is  great.  You  may  always  know 
that  he  did  his  full  duty,  and  in  this  hour  of  your  great  sorrow 
may  God's  richest  blessings  be  yours. 

The  Chaplain,  the  Rev.  Winfred  E.  Robb,  wrote  assur- 
ing Mr.  Mills  that  his  son  had  not  suffered  from  his  fatal 
wound.     Death,  he  said,  was  instantaneous. 

Captain  Frank  B.  Younkin,  commander  of  Company  G 
was  wounded  severely  a  short  time  before  Mills  was  killed. 
He  was  more  than  six  weeks  in  hospital.  As  soon  as  he 
was  able,  on  September  18,  he  wrote: 

I  cannot  write  a  letter  of  sympathy  such  as  I  would  like. 
It  was  such  an  awful  blow  to  us  all  to  see  Quincy  and  Sol  both 
go,  and  I  can  only  say  that  every  officer  in  the  regiment,  and 
all  the  men  in  Co.  G  join  me  in  extending  sympathy  to  you 
in  your  great  sorrow. 

Quincy  died  as  he  lived,  a  true,  faithful  officer,  and  if  he  had 
had  more  consideration  for  himself  instead  of  looking  out  for 
the  safety  of  his  platoon  he  no  doubt  would  be  alive  to-day. 
No  doubt  you  wish  to  know  just  how  he  was  killed,  and  I  will 
tell  you  as  nearly  as  I  can  from  what  others  have  told  me,  for 
I  was  wounded  a  short  time  before.  .  .  . 


Captain  and  Comrade  465 

While  I  know  this  is  an  awful  blow  to  both  of  you,  as  well  as 
ourselves,  it  may  comfort  you  to  look  upon  your  loss  as  a 
sacrifice  for  democracy  and  the  freedom  of  the  world.  If 
there  is  anything  I  can  do  to  be  of  comfort  to  you,  I  trust  you 
will  not  hesitate  to  ask  me.  If  I  am  fortunate  enough  to  return 
to  the  States,  I  hope  to  have  the  pleasure  of  meeting  you  both. 

Captain  Younkin  added  in  a  postscript  assurance  that 
Mills  had  been  recommended  for  promotion.  He  wrote 
again  on  October  24,  giving  particulars  as  to  the  location 
of  the  grave  on  the  Croix  Rouge  farm.  He  then  mentioned 
the  killing  of  Lieutenant  Nelson  on  October  7.  After 
returning  to  America,  he  wrote  on  July  24,  1919,  saying : 

On  the  eve  of  the  first  anniversary  of  Quincy's  death  I  feel 
it  only  fitting  that  I  should  drop  you  a  few  lines.  We  have  been 
home  some  two  months  now,  and  I  am  again  back  in  my 
business  which  I  found  well  taken  care  of  by  my  brother  during 
my  absence.  I  found  my  wife  and  boy  looking  well,  and  so 
glad  to  see  me.  In  fact  everyone  was.  I  never  realized  I  had 
so  many  friends  until  I  got  back. 

Just  a  year  ago  to-day,  we  were  all  in  a  village  called  Chan- 
gis,  near  Meaux.  It  was  from  here  we  took  French  trucks 
for  the  Chateau-Thierry  front,  and  what  was  to  be  our  really 
first  great  battle.  I  can  well  remember  Quincy  coming  up  to 
me  before  we  got  into  the  trucks  and  asking  where  we  were 
going.     But  at  that  time  none  of  us  knew  anything. 

I  trust  that  this  finds  both  of  you  well,  and  that  it  may  in 
some  way  help  you  in  your  sorrow. 

Lieutenant  O.  B.  Nelson,  whose  fate  Captain  Younkin 
told  in  one  of  his  letters,  had  written  on  September  26: 

I  wish  to  express  my  sincere  sympathy  for  you,  his  parents, 
and  I  want  to  assiu-e  you  that  I  certainly  miss  him.  He  was 
my  Buddy  in  the  company,  and  we  were  always  together 
whenever  we  could  be.  He  was  liked  by  every  member  of  the 
company,  and  every  man  misses  him. 
30 


466  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

Lieutenant  Mills  was  killed  while  leading  his  platoon  into 
action  a  short  distance  north  of  Chateau-Thierry.  His  platoon 
was  right  along  beside  mine.  I  was  on  the  right  and  Lieuten- 
ant Mills  on  the  left,  advancing  toward  the  Germans,  and 
Lieutenant  Mills  died  fighting  like  a  true  soldier.  I  was 
wounded  on  the  same  day,  went  to  the  hospital  and  was  there 
for  a  month  when  I  recovered  and  returned  to  our  company. 

Another,  whose  sympathy  and  practical  help  with 
necessary  information  touching  the  recovery  of  Mills's 
effects  were  deeply  appreciated,  was  Lieutenant  Frank  S. 
Pearsall.     In  a  letter  dated  October  15,  he  says: 

We  were  advancing  through  a  thick  wood,  Quincy  was  on 
the  left  and  I  on  the  right.  They  were  shelling  the  woods 
heavily,  and  the  company  became  somewhat  disorganized  to  a 
certain  extent.  I  went  around  and  tried  to  get  things  straight, 
and  while  on  this  mission  is  when  I  saw  Quincy.  He  and 
Lieutenant  Rubel  had  both  been  killed.  I  was  the  only  officer 
who  had  not  been  hit,  but  at  the  present  I  am  in  the  hospital, 
having  been  hit  three  times  in  the  last  drive.  I  thought  of 
writing  you  after  the  July  drive  was  over,  but  instead  wrote  to 
Mr.  Pierce,  one  of  Quincy 's  friends  at  the  City  Hall,  and  told 
him  to  convey  the  news  to  you.  I  do  hope  he  has  fulfilled  my 
request. 

We  all  miss  Quincy,  as  he  was  loved  and  respected  by  every- 
one, especially  by  the  men.  Quincy  and  I  got  closer  to  one 
another  after  we  came  over  here,  and  we  agreed  upon  almost 
every  question.  I  found  him  a  very  broad  and  fair  minded 
companion.  The  only  time  we  would  disagree  on  anything 
would  be  at  night  when  he  wanted  to  sleep,  and  I  wanted  to 
talk,  so  you  see  there  was  not  much  disagreement  between  us. 

Lieutenant  Pearsall  wrote  again  on  November  6,  fur- 
nishing details  of  Mills's  end  which  have  been  embodied 
in  the  account  given  above.  In  response  to  an  inquiry 
that  had  been  made  he  said  the  dog  Mills  had  been 
interested  in  still  lived  and  was  a  pensioner  of  the  regi- 


Well  Remembered  4^7 

mental  kitchens.  From  Marshall,  Texas,  on  May  30, 
19 1 9,  he  wrote  a  letter  giving  advice  as  to  the  best  method 
of  recovering  some  mislaid  baggage.  On  one  point,  his 
view  is  interesting  and  no  doubt  well  grounded : 

As  for  Quincy's  pistol  and  field  glasses,  I  never  saw  them,  but 
will  explain  what  I  think  became  of  them.  You  see,  at  first 
only  the  officers  and  a  few  of  the  men  had  pistols,  and  just  as 
soon  as  a  man  fell  who  had  a  pistol  the  men  would  make  a  rush 
to  get  it,  as  they  all  wanted  one.  This,  I  think,  was  O.K. 
Why  a  pistol  idle,  when  there  were  plenty  of  men  to  use  it? 

Quincy  was  killed  late  in  the  afternoon  of  July  26,  and 
early  next  morning  when  I  went  out  looking  for  him,  a  167th 
Regiment  officer  took  me  to  where  he  lay.  I  searched  him  and 
found  nothing  of  importance,  so  put  the  articles  back  into  his 
pockets.  I  could  have  taken  better  care  of  his  effects  but  for 
the  fact  that  I  was  the  only  officer  left,  and  we  had  to  attack 
again  that  day,  and  every  day  for  six  following  days. 

Sergeant  Will  Scott,  of  Company  G,  in  whom  Mills  had 
taken  much  interest,  repUed  to  a  letter  from  Mrs.  Mills 
asking  for  information 

The  last  time  I  saw  your  son  he  was  leading  his  men  bravely, 
and  toward  the  enemy.  We  were  in  the  drive  between  Rheims 
and  Soissons.  The  last  town  I  remember  going  through  was 
Epieds.  We  were  driving  the  Germans  before  us,  and  the 
fighting  was  c[uite  heavy. 

I  was  wounded  about  the  same  time  Lieutenant  Mills  was 
killed.  We  miss  him  very  much,  and  extend  our  heartfelt 
sympathy  to  you,  his  Mother,  who  will  miss  him  far  more 
than  we.  We  are  glad  to  be  able  to  write  that  he  died  a  sol- 
dier's death,  fighting  the  enemy  to  the  last— a  firm,  true,  loyal 
American  citizen. 

By  an  odd  coincidence  another  young  native  of  Iredell, 
Henry  S.  Grose,  was  drafted  into  Company  G,  in  the 
process  of  filling  up  the  ranks  after  the  heavy  losses  of  the 


468  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

July  drive.  Mr.  Mills  heard  of  this  and  wrote  to  him. 
He  answered  from  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  headquarters  in  Burgh- 
rohl,  Germany,  on  March  20,  19 19,  recalling  having  as  a 
small  boy  seen  Mr.  Mills.  He  had  not  previously  known, 
however,  that  he  was  Quincy's  father.     He  continued: 

I  did  not  know  your  son  personally.  The  officers  and  men 
both  speak  very  highly  of  him.  They  say  he  was  a  good  officer. 
I  know  he  was  because  this  is  the  best  company  in  the  A.  E.  F. 
I  have  been  with  it  since  August  26,  191 8.  I  never  saw  a 
better  set  of  officers  than  we  have. 

I  showed  your  letter  to  the  boys.  They  were  glad  to  know 
that  it  was  from  their  beloved  lieutenant's  father.  They  said 
to  tell  you  that  they  appreciated  him  very  much.  One  told  me 
that  he  was  wounded  when  your  son  was  hit.  He  says  that 
he  was  a  brave  man  and  the  best  officer  he  ever  was  under. 

One  more  comrade's  letter  must  be  given  here.  It  was 
assuredly  bom  of  a  beautiful  inspiration.  It  was  written 
by  Lieutenant  L.  M.  C.  Adams,  who  later  became  captain 
of  Company  H,  from  Chaumont,  Haute  Mame,  on 
November  24,  191 8.     It  read: 

My  dear  Mr.  Mills:  The  men  of  the  American  E.  F. 
have  set  aside  this  day  as  one  on  which  we  shall  all  write 
"  Dad's  Christmas  Letter."  Every  man  here  who  has  a  father 
at  home  is  to-day  sending  him  a  message  of  love  and  thanks  for 
the  early  training  which  made  us  ready  to  come  over  here  when 
our  country  asked  us  to. 

I  have  just  written  a  long  letter  to  my  own  Dad,  and  while 
doing  so  I  could  not  help  thinking  of  the  fathers  who  would  get 
no  letter  because  their  boys  had  made  the  greatest  sacrifice 
a  soldier  can  make.  My  association  with  Quincy  was  very 
close,  and  naturally  my  thoughts  turned  to  you.  I  know  that 
you  and  his  mother  miss  not  only  the  Christmas  letter,  but  all 
the  others  which  he  was  in  the  habit  of  writing.  I  know  that  a 
letter  from  someone  else  cannot  begin  to  take  the  place  of  his, 


A  Plattsburg  Friend  469 

but  I  want  to  do  a  little  something  in  his  stead,  even  as  I  know 
he  would  want  to  do  for  me. 

Mrs.  Mills  knows  that  Quincy  and  I  were  in  the  same 
company  at  Plattsburg  and  that  we  were  assigned  to  the  i68th 
Infantry  at  the  same  time.  He  was  in  G  and  I  in  H,  so  we 
were  close  together  all  the  time.  We  had  many  long  talks 
together.  Most  of  them  concerned  the  things  at  hand,  but 
often  we  went  back  into  our  past  experiences  and  ideas.  We 
came  to  think  a  great  deal  of  each  other,  although  there  were, 
of  course,  many  points  on  which  our  opinions  differed. 

I  was  not  with  the  regiment  when  they  went  into  the  ad- 
vance in  which  he  lost  his  life.  I  had  gotten  into  trouble  a 
few  days  before  when  we  were  on  the  Champagne  front. 
Quincy  had  hunted  up  the  ambulance  for  me,  and  had  helped 
put  me  into  it.  He  was  one  of  the  last  of  my  friends  whom  I 
saw  before  they  went  into  the  big  fight.  I  have  heard  the 
story  of  his  death  from  several  of  the  officers  and  men  who 
witnessed  it. 

I  do  not  know  just  where  he  is  resting  now,  but  I  am  making 
an  effort  to  find  out.  I  want  to  visit  the  spot  before  I  leave 
France.  If  possible  I  will  bring  you  a  photo  of  it.  I  know 
that  it  is  in  one  of  the  many  places  which  the  United  States  has 
taken  over  from  the  French,  and  which  will  be  cared  for  per- 
manently by  the  people  of  both  great  countries.  Personally, 
I  think  that  it  is  the  only  proper  resting  place  for  those  who 
gave  up  their  lives  on  the  field  of  battle. 

I  know  that  he  must  have  written  you  of  his  great  admiration 
for  the  spirit  of  the  French  people  which  makes  them  all 
feel,  even  in  the  darkest  hours,  that  to  die  "For  France"  is  the 
noblest  end  which  can  come  to  a  man.  We  marvel  at  the  way 
the  old  mothers  and  fathers  of  this  country  who  have  suffered 
for  years,  and  given  up  perhaps  five  or  six  sons,  still  go  their 
way  sustained  by  pride  that  they  were  able  to  make  the 
sacrifice  for  their  beloved  France. 

Now,  in  the  days  of  rejoicing  that  Peace  and  Victory  have 
come,  these  people  seem  to  be  more  than  ever  imbued  with  the 
spirit  of  pride.  Their  cemeteries  have  been  put  in  wonderful 
condition.     Every  grave  is  covered  with  flowers  and  flags. 


470  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

Every  family,  no  matter  how  poor,  has  done  its  best  to  show 
the  world  that  it  contributed  to  the  cause. 

I  trust  that  you  and  Mrs.  Mills  will  accept  my  heartfelt 
sympathy,  and  that,  in  spite  of  your  great  loss,  this  Christmas 
may  not  be  entirely  dark,  but  that  it  may  be  brightened  by  the 
knowledge  that  he  met  the  fate  which  he  anticipated,  and 
made  the  sacrifice  which  he  was  entirely  ready  and  willing  to 

make. 

Sincerely  yours, 

L.  M.  C.  Adams. 

In  the  same  spirit,  Mills's  old  friend,  Dr.  Wallace 
Hoffman,  wrote  from  American  Base  Hospital  65,  with 
which  he  was  serving  in  France,  on  Mothers'  Day,  1919, 
telling  Mrs.  Mills  how  he  was  thinking  of  her  and  of 
Quincy.     He  said: 

Quincy  and  I  always  had  a  great  deal  in  common.  Just  a 
year  ago  when  I  entered  the  service  he  wrote  me  a  character- 
istic letter.  It  was  spring  and  I  think  he  was  in  Lorraine. 
My  answer  to  him  was  returned  to  me  just  a  few  days  ago. 
.  .  .  With  your  sorrow  there  must  also  be  blended  pride  in 
the  part  your  son  played  in  the  big  affair. 

A  letter  from  David  F.  St.  Clair,  of  Washington,  D.  C, 
a  family  friend,  dated  September  22,  1918,  is  of  strong 
interest  as  evidence  of  Mills's  state  of  mind  as  he  entered 
the  army : 

He  may  never  have  told  you,  but  from  conversations  with 
him  I  know  that  he  died  as  he  wished  to  die.  Once  in  the 
little  sitting  room  where  you  now  are  he  said  to  me,  in  speaking 
of  the  necessity  of  universal  military  training,  that  he  would 
die  on  the  battlefield  to  emphasize  the  wisdom  of  establishing 
this  principle  in  the  polity  of  our  government. 

"  But  that  is  not  your  choice  of  death  ? "  I  said. 

"It  is,"  he  replied,  "I  shall  go  that  way." 

I  shall  never  forget  the  seriousness  of  his  tone  of  voice,  and 


Command  by  Kindness  47 1 

ever  vsince  I  learned  he  was  in  France  I  have  looked  in  every 
casualty  list  to  see  his  name  among  the  dead. 

Quincy's  sense  of  duty  glowed  as  that  of  a  Crusader.  He 
was  one  of  the  most  serious  souls  I  have  ever  known.  When  he 
differed  with  me — as  he  always  did  with  such  good  will — it  was 
with  such  strength  of  conviction,  that  I  sometimes  felt  men- 
tally staggered  and  paralyzed.  "Why,"  I  said  to  myself,  "I 
must  be  wrong.     It  can't  be  any  other  way." 

The  end  of  his  life  has  emphasized  as  nothing  else  in  his  life 
could  his  devotion  to  duty,  but  without  his  life,  as  you  knew 
it  from  day  to  day,  his  death  would  mean  but  little. 

Besides  the  letters  to  Mills's  parents  given  above  in 
part,  Lieutenant  Pearsall  sent  a  communication  to  Mr.  Al. 
Pierce,  the  City  Hall  representative  of  The  Evening  Sun, 
giving  the  details  of  the  fatal  struggle  at  the  Croix  Rouge 
Farm.  This  resulted  in  the  publication  of  an  article  fully 
narrating  Mills's  end.  The  facts  have  all  been  incor- 
porated in  the  foregoing  pages.  It  included,  however,  this 
tribute  by  Pearsall  to  his  lost  comrade : 

I  joined  the  regiment  the  same  day  Lieutenant  Mills  did 
and  being  a  U.  S.  R.  we  became  fast  friends,  particularly  after 
we  got  over  here,  I  found  him  to  be  a  real  man  in  every  way, 
well  liked  by  all  the  officers  in  the  regiment  and  especially  by 
his  own  men.  He  had  a  way  of  handling  those  under  him  by 
kindness,  a  thing  which  cannot  be  done  by  everybody  for  the 
lack  of  understanding.  However,  he  got  the  work  out  of  them 
in  this  manner,  which  I  think  is  a  great  trait  to  be  blessed  with. 
We  all  mourn  his  death,  and  vow  that  it  will  not  have  been 
in  vain. 

Lieutenant  Pearsall  himself  is  a  fine  sample  of  the 
American  volunteer  soldier  and  officer.  He  was  only  a 
boy  of  twenty-three,  a  bank  clerk  in  the  little  Texas  town 
of  Marshall  when  war  was  declared.  He  volunteered, 
took  his  training  at  Camp  Leon  Springs,  Texas,  and  was 


472  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

ordered  when  commissioned  to  the  i68th.  In  the  six 
days  after  Mills  and  Rubel  were  killed,  Younkin  and 
Nelson  being  previously  wounded,  Pearsall  carried  the 
whole  responsibility  of  commanding  Company  G  in  the 
continuous  fighting  to  the  banks  of  the  Ourcq.  He  was 
at  last  badly  wounded,  passed  several  months  of  pain  in  a 
Paris  hospital  and  was  discharged  from  the  army  on  his 
home  coming  in  the  spring  of  1 919  as  ten  per  cent  perma- 
nently disabled.  In  addition,  he  lost  practically  all  his 
baggage  and  effects  and  never  received  promotion  that  was 
promised  him.  With  characteristic  courage,  he  resumed 
business  in  his  old  home  state  and  is  making  his  way 
in  the  world  by  his  own  efforts. 

A  beautiful  act  of  kindly  service  was  performed  by  Mrs. 
Mabel  Fonda  Gareissen  after  the  removal  of  Mills's  body 
from  the  grave  on  the  battlefield  and  at  a  time  when  his 
parents  were  deeply  anxious  as  to  the  disposition  made  of  it. 
She  had  already  written  a  letter  of  sympathy  and  comfort 
from  Limoges,  France,  where  she  was  doing  war  work. 
In  it  she  dwelt  upon  the  friendship  between  Quincy  and 
her  own  dead  son.  She  wrote  again  in  January,  19 19, 
assuring  Mrs.  Mills  of  the  care  taken  to  make  certain  the 
identity  of  the  bodies  of  the  soldiers.  She  also  gave 
details  of  the  measures  taken  to  care  for  the  graves.  She 
added  a  promise  to  visit  Mills's  grave  at  the  earliest 
opportunity.  This  promise  she  kept  in  February,  and, 
afterwards,  sent  a  letter  to  Mrs.  Mills  giving  an  account 
of  her  pilgrimage  which  was  most  comforting  both  in  the 
information  it  conveyed  and  through  its  consolatory  spirit. 
She  wrote  from  Bordeaux  on  February  24,  191 9,  after  a 
visit  to  Paris  and  a  side  trip  to  Chateau-Thierry.  At  the 
latter  place.  Lieutenant  Read,  the  aviator-photographer, 
interested  himself  in  her  mission  and  allowed  her  the 
use  of  his  car  and  chauffeur.  She  describes  thus  her 
journey : 


At  Mills's  Grave  473 

The  day  I  went  to  Quincy  was  a  glorious  spring  day.  All 
nature  was  glad  to  be  alive.  When  we  reached  the  great 
meadows  the  songs  of  larks  filled  the  sunlight  as  if  to  tell  us 
"There  is  no  death."  Never  will  I  forget  the  effect  it 
produced  on  us  all, 

Quincy's  earthly  body  has  been  brought  out  of  the  forest  and 
has  been  placed  with  many  of  his  comrades  of  the  Rainbow 
Division — in  fact  all  in  this  little  cemetery  are  of  that  division. 
Officers  and  their  men  lie  side  by  side  regardless  of  rank,  as  it 
should  be,  for  there  is  but  one  rank  in  Heaven.  The  cemetery 
is  not  yet  finished,  others  are  to  be  brought  from  the  forest  to 
fill  it,  among  them  Lieut.  Rubel.  Stout  tree  posts  surround 
the  lot,  stretched  well  with  heavy  barbed  wire.  The  men  lie 
head  to  head  and  a  simple  cross  marks  each  grave.  When  it  is 
finished,  the  flag,  cut  round  with  fibre  ribbon,  red,  white  and 
blue,  will  decorate  the  center  of  each  cross. 

The  greatest  care  is  being  taken  of  the  fallen,  I  am  glad  to  say. 
As  fast  as  possible  they  are  removed  from  their  solitary, 
temporary  places  and  arranged  in  cemeteries.  I  wanted  to 
carry  greens  and  flowers  for  you,  but  it  was  impossible  to  get 
anything  anywhere.     We  even  looked  about  the  woods. 

As  I  stood  over  Quincy's  grave  in  the  midst  of  all  these  who 
fell  right  there  of  the  Rainbow,  a  longing  came  over  me  to  have 
my  darling  with  his  own,  for  with  all  the  anguish  of  the  parents 
there  is  something,  in  spite  of  it,  noble  and  beautiful.  These 
brave  splendid  young  lives  went  out  together  and  what  they 
left  behind  rests  side  by  side.  I  am  certain  when  you  come  you 
will  feel  it  all  as  I  do.  And  with  the  awful  void  they  have  left 
in  our  lives,  could  we  as  devoted,  unselfish  mothers  wish  them 
back  in  this  mess?  But  perhaps  you  do  not  realize  what  is 
ahead.  We  over  here  see  no  light  for  this  martyred  generation 
to  which  our  boys  belong.     At  least  their  troubles  are  over. 

There  were  numerous  newspaper  appreciations.  That 
of  The  Evening  Sun  has  been  given  at  the  beginning  of  this 
book.  A  column  was  dedicated  "To  a  Friend"  by  The 
Charlotte  News.     The  writer,  Julian  Miller,  a  fellow  stud- 


474  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

ent  at  Chapel  Hill,  speaks  of  the  high  hopes,  the  great 
expectations  for  Mills's  career  that  were  entertained  when 
he  graduated  from  the  University.  His  rapid  advance- 
ment on  The  Evening  Sun  assured  friends  that  the  fore- 
cast was  about  to  be  realized.  But,  "like  many  other 
virile  young  Americans,  he  volunteered  for  service  and 
was  among  the  first  to  reach  the  land  of  fury  yonder." 
Then  came  the  supreme  sacrifice.  "If  many  young  men 
like  this  splendid  fellow,  with  such  ennobled  ideals,  with 
such  prospect  for  brilliance  in  his  profession,  with  such 
radiant  hopes  centered  in  him,  paid  the  price  for  its 
possession,  Epieds  was  a  costly  acquirement." 

The  Greensboro,  N.  C,  Daily  News  published  a  fine 
tribute  of  which  the  following  was  the  concluding 
paragraph : 

The  honors  won  by  this  brave  youth  add  a  new  lustre  to  the 
history  of  his  native  State,  his  native  community  and  his  alma 
mater.  His  example  furnishes  a  new  inspiration  to  duty  and 
sacrifice  to  those  who  were  privileged  to  know  him  and  call  him 
friend,  and  to  all  the  great  procession  that  preceded  and 
followed  him  through  the  University's  doors. 

In  the  Williamson  County  Sun  of  Georgetown,  Texas, 
of  which  John  M.  Sharpe,  a  first  cousin  of  Mills  on  his 
mother's  side,  is  the  editor,  a  sketch  of  his  career  with 
excerpts  from  his  letter  of  July  22  appeared  on  Sep- 
tember 6.  "It  may  be,"  says  the  opening  part,  "that 
he  is  in  a  prison  camp ;  it  may  be  that  his  blood  has  been 
spilled  on  the  fields  of  France;  but  it  matters  not,  if  he  is 
dead,  his  life  has  been  given  willingly  for  mankind,  for  the 
life  and  liberty  of  the  men,  the  women  and  children  of 
France,  of  Belgium,  of  England,  of  the  United  States  and 
of  the  World." 

In  "The  Sun  Dial,"  The  Evening  Sun's  editorial  page 
"Column,"  this  poem  from  the  pen  and  the  heart  of  Philip 


Victor  of  His  Life  475 

Coan,  whose  appreciation  of  Mills  as  an  associate  in 
editorial  work  has  been  given,  was  printed  on  November 
8,  1918: 

To  Q.  S.  M. 

Good  friend,  they  tell  me  you  are  dead  in  France. 
Between  us,  greater  than  the  torn  expanse 
Of  gray  Atlantic,  brims  the  darker  flood   .    .    . 
And  so  the  place  is  empty  where  you  stood ! 

A  thousand  times  we  talked  in  lighter  days — 
Alas — till  interchange  to  either  gaze 
Had  made  of  the  companion's  soul  and  creed 
An  open  page  one  scarce  could  help  but  read. 

Now,  poor  remembrance  seeks  your  song  or  pun 
Drowned  in  the  bitter  rush  of  Acheron; 
Did  aught  dwell  so  with  you  of  all  I  said. 
Does  something,  friend,  of  me  lie  with  you  dead? 

What  thoughts  this  hour  and  aye  are  yours?     I  trust. 
Those  clarion  thoughts  that  dashed  your  dust  to  dust! 
So,  like  the  Grecian  woman  struck  to  stone. 
You  live  the  unspent  hour  ne'er  overthrown. 

Full  few  of  those  the  breast  of  earth  shall  keep 
May  win  at  dying  such  an  ample  sleep; 
What  spirits,  cleansed  as  yours  with  battle  fire, 
Its  glow  departing,  shall  be  quenched  in  mire? 

Some  may  forget,  some,  thousand  times  recite 
Their  hero  season's  legend  long  grown  trite; 
Safe  from  the  touch  of  Time  to  chill  or  soil. 
You,  victor  of  your  life,  hold  fast  its  spoil. 

None  has  a  greater  claim  to  share  in  the  praise  bestowed 
upon  the  Rainbow  Division  in  a  General  Order  reviewing 
its  record,  than  Mills,  although  he  had  answered  his  last 
roll  call  three  weeks  before  it  was  published.     In  this 


476  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

Major  General  Menoher,  the  commander  touches  on  the 
trench  experiences  in  Lorraine,  the  Champagne  defensive 
and  the  Chateau-Thierry  drive.     He  says : 

For  your  services  in  Lorraine,  your  division  was  formally 
commended  in  General  Orders  by  the  French  Army  Corps 
Commander  under  whom  you  served.  For  your  services  in 
Champagne,  your  assembled  officers  received  the  personal 
thanks  and  commendation  of  General  Gouraud  himself.  For 
your  services  on  the  Ourcq,  your  division  was  ofhcially  com- 
plimented in  a  letter  from  the  Commanding  General,  ist  Army 
Corps,  of  July  28,  1918. 

To  your  success,  all  ranks  and  all  services  have  contributed, 
and  I  desire  to  express  to  every  man  in  the  command  my 
appreciation  of  his  devoted  and  courageous  effort. 

The  Association  of  City  Hall  Reporters  held  a  special 
meeting  on  September  16, 19 18,  in  Room  9,  City  Hall,  New 
York,  their  official  headquarters,  and  adopted  resolutions 
upon  the  death  of  their  former  member,  instructing  the 
secretary  to  send  a  copy  to  his  father  and  mother : 

The  Association  of  City  Hall  Reporters  has  learned  with 
deep  regret  of  the  death  on  the  battlefield  in  France 
of  Lieutenant  Quincy  S.  Mills,  long  an  honored  member  of  this 
Association. 

As  a  member  of  the  reportorial  and  editorial  staff  of  The 
Evening  Sun,  Lieutenant  Mills  was  an  industrious  gatherer  of 
news  and  a  vigorous  writer  who  lived  up  to  the  highest  ideals 
of  his  profession.  The  members  of  the  Association  deeply 
deplore  his  death,  but  find  cause  for  gratification  that  he  died 
fighting  in  the  greatest  cause  the  world  has  ever  known ;  fight- 
ing for  humanity;  humanity  not  only  in  the  present  generation, 
but  for  long  generations  to  come.  Truly  it  may  be  said  of  him 
that  he  fought  a  good  fight  in  a  cause  that  the  world  will  ever 
remember. 

Whereas,  the  Association  has  met  in  special  session  to  take 


Fellow  Workers'  Tribute  477 

action  on  the  death  of   Lieutenant  Quincy  S.    Mills,   now 
therefore  be  it 

Resolved,  that  these  proceedings  be  spread  upon  the  records 
of  the  Association,  and  that  a  copy  thereof  be  sent  to  the  father 
and  mother  of  Lieutenant  Mills  as  a  token  of  the  esteem  in 
which  he  was  held  by  his  associates  and  fellow  workers,  and  of 
their  sincere  regret  at  his  death  as  well  as  an  expression  of  their 
sorrow  at  their  loss. 

Mr.  James  Blaine  Walker,  then  Secretary  of  the  Public 
Service  Commission  for  New  York  City,  an  ex-newspaper- 
man and  a  member  of  the  Association,  was  unable  to 
attend  the  meeting.  He  wrote  to  Mr.  Charles  B.  Ham- 
bidge,  the  President,  a  fine  appreciation  of  Mills  as  a 
newspaper  worker.     He  said : 

Quincy  Mills  and  I  were  friends  for  years.  We  worked  on 
many  stories  together  and  have  been  thrown  into  that  intimate 
contact  which  only  newspapermen  know.  In  all  his  relations 
he  was  a  most  honorable  gentleman,  a  most  competent  reporter 
and  a  most  likable  fellow  personally.  With  high  ideals,  with 
the  strongest  integrity  of  purpose  and  without  any  shadow  of 
wavering  on  questions  of  right  and  wrong  as  well  as  upon 
questions  affecting  the  public  weal,  he  was  admirably  equipped 
to  play  an  important  part  in  the  journalistic  history  of  New 
York  City.  It  was  typical  of  the  man  to  respond  instantly  to 
the  Government's  roll  call,  not  reckoning  the  loss  of  his  well 
earned  place  in  the  journalistic  profession  or  the  possible 
consequences  of  military  service  at  the  front. 

Now  that  he  has  made  the  greatest  of  all  sacrifices,  I  am 
sure  his  death  was  such  a  one  as  he  desired.  His  career  and 
his  glorious  ending  will  ever  be  an  inspiration  to  his  fellows, 
and,  while  we  regret  his  death,  let  us  all  unite  in  honoring  his 
memory  and  perpetuating  the  spirit  of  his  life. 

The  members  of  The  Sun  (formerly  The  Evening  Sun) 
and  The  Herald  staffs,  who  had  served  in  the  army  formed, 


478  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

on  September  i8,  1919,  a  post  of  the  American  Legion 
with  ninety-four  members.  They  named  it  the  Quincy 
Sharpe  Mills  Post  in  honor  of  their  dead  associate,  of 
whose  newspaper  and  military  career  they  were  equally 
proud. 

On  July  10,  1 9 19,  in  the  ofBce  of  The  Evening  Sun,  then 
at  No.  170  Nassau  Street,  New  York,  a  bronze  tablet, 
subscribed  for  by  all  the  staff  of  the  paper,  was  unveiled 
with  simple  exercises.  It  has  been  since  removed  to  the 
new  offices  at  No.  280  Broadway,  where  it  is  conspicuous 
on  the  wall  of  the  large  news  room. 

The  inscription  on  it  is  this: 

THE   STAFF   OF   THE   EVENING   SUN 

ERECTS  THIS   MEMORIAL   IN   HONOR   OF   THREE 

OF  ITS   MEMBERS   WHO   FELL   IN   THE   GREAT   WAR 

LIEUT.    QUINCY   SHARPE   MILLS 

CO.    G,    168TH   INFANTRY,    U.    S.    A. 

KILLED   IN   ACTION   NEAR   EPIEDS,    FRANCE 

JULY   26,    I918 

LIEUT.    CONRAD   CRAWFORD 

CO.  B,  47TH  Infantry,  u.  s.  a. 

KILLED   IN   ACTION   AT   HILL  220   NEAR   SERGY,    FRANCE 
AUGUST    I,    I918 

LIEUT.    STUART   EMMET    EDGAR 

IO3RD   AERO    SQUADRON,    U.    S.    A. 

KILLED   IN   LINE   OF   DUTY   NEAR   ST.    MIHIEL,    FRANCE 

AUGUST    17,    I918 


He  that  loseth  his  life  shall  find  it. 
ERECTED  A.D.    I919 


A  Shining  Mark  479 

At  the  dedication,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Mills  and  relatives  of 
Lieutenants  Cravvford  and  Edgar  were  present  along  with 
the  entire  staff  of  The  Evening  Sun,  many  newspapermen 
from  other  offices  and  several  members  of  the  Mitchel 
city  administration.  The  late  George  McLeod  Smith, 
the  Managing  Editor,  presided,  paying  tribute  in  a  brief 
speech  to  the  departed  men  and  their  spirit  of  devotion. 
The  Rev.  Duncan  Browne,  of  Cragsmoor,  L.  I.,  affection- 
ately known  among  the  soldiers  as  Chaplain  Browne, 
unveiled  the  tablet.  James  Luby,  the  Editor  of  The 
Evening  Sun,  made  an  address  in  which  he  said: 

Death  loves  a  shining  mark  and  he  took  of  the  best  we 
had  to  give.  It  would  be  too  heartrending  to  go  here  into 
all  the  details  of  recollection  which  in  the  present  instance 
prove  the  truth  of  the  old  saying.  Only  a  few  brief  words 
may  be  said.     Indeed,  in  a  sense,  all  words  are  superfluous. 

Quincy  Sharpe  Mills,  with  whom  I  was  intimately 
associated  in  his  work  here,  was  no  longer  a  boy  when  the 
great  call  came  to  him.  He  had  reached  the  maturity  of 
early  manhood  and  had  attained  it  with  a  richness  of  spirit 
that  singled  him  out  from  among  his  associates  and  fellow 
workers.  He  had  already,  for  his  age,  made  a  success  in 
life;  he  had  entered  upon  a  career  which  promised  him 
profit  and  distinction.  So  far  as  human  judgment  could 
foresee,  he  had  an  unbroken  future  of  advancement  and 
usefulness  before  him. 

Mills  had  a  mind  of  admirable  clearness  and  alertness 
and  a  judgment  quick  and  sure,  vigorous  but  temperate. 
His  spirit  was  high,  his  instinct  of  service  masterful;  his 
courage  absolute,  his  sense  of  right  aggressive.  He  looked 
at  public  questions  without  any  personal  or  interested 
bias.  His  work  all  aimed  at  the  public  good  and  the 
triumph  of  honor. 

His  private  character  was  of  a  piece  with  his  professional 


48o  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

attitude.  Honor  and  faith  and  good  intent  animated  his 
entire  conduct  and  were  transparently  the  principles  of  his 
intercourse  with  his  friends  and  acquaintances.  But,  if 
his  outlook  upon  life  was  essentially  serious,  I  should 
do  him  an  injustice  if  I  ignored  that  other  phase  in  which 
he  was  so  very  human.  He  had  animal  spirits,  sense  of 
humor  and  humor,  a  keen  capacity  for  enjoyment  and  gifts 
for  contributing  to  the  keen  enjoyment  of  all  around  him. 
He  was  as  popular  in  the  hour  of  relaxation  as  he  was 
esteemed  and  admired  in  the  serious  pursuits  of  life. 
To-day  his  cheery  voice  is  missed  as  much  among 
us  in  the  social  hour,  when  thoughts  are  exchanged 
and  the  jest  and  the  retort  go  'round,  as  is  his  pen 
from  the  columns  which  it  once  strengthened  and 
adorned. 

Mills  gave  up  a  present  such  as  few  men  attain  at  his 
age  and  a  future  that  relatively  few  can  look  forward  to,  in 
obedience  to  a  characteristic  mandate  of  his  soul.  Seeing 
from  afar  the  coming  crisis,  he  devoted  his  leisure  to 
preparation  for  it  during  two  years.  We  all  knew  he 
would  go  when  the  time  came.  It  seemed  quite  natural 
to  us  when  he  went.  It  was  Mills's  way.  He  went,  not 
withou  t  a  sense  of  the  shadow  of  fa  te  upon  him .  I  believe , 
all  his  friends  believe,  that  he  did  not  expect  to  return. 
But  he  went.  Hope  beckoned  him  on  in  his  chosen 
career.  He  had  domestic  allurements,  present  and 
prospective,  to  hold  back  his  courage  and  devotion.  But 
he  went. 

Death  came  to  him  in  what  seems  an  appropriate  way. 
His  men  were  under  fire  at  a  point  near  Epieds,  France, 
and  in  great  peril.  He  went  forward  in  the  direction  of 
the  enemy  seeking  shelter  for  them.  He  stood  alone  when 
a  shell  fell  beside  him  and  exploding  killed  him.  I  think  it 
was  such  a  way  as  he  might  have  chosen,  himself,  to  die. 
At  any  rate,  I  know  no  better  way. 


Vicarious  Sacrifice  481 

The  speaker  next  paid  tribute  to  the  courage  and 
sacrifice  of  Lieutenants  Crawford  and  Edgar.  He  then 
said  in  conclusion : 

In  putting  up  this  tablet,  I  take  it,  we,  none  of  us, 
imagine  that  we  are  doing  anything  for  the  men  named  on 
it .  They  have  rounded  out  their  life  stories  by  their  action 
and  by  their  sacrifice  which  leave  nothing  for  their  survivors 
to  add.  Their  record  is  written  with  finality  in  their  blood ; 
their  reward  belongs  to  another  sphere  of  existence. 

It  is  in  one  sense  for  the  benefit  of  future  people  that  we 
do  this  thing  to-day,  for  the  benefit  of  the  generations  of 
workers  who  shall  come  after  us  to  this  institution  to  carry 
on  the  work  and  uphold  the  traditions  that  these  three 
first,  and  we,  later  on,  lay  down.  To  the  coming  ones, 
the  children  of  to-day,  we  aim  to  throw  the  torch  of 
inspiration  whose  flame  the  dead  have  made  leap  higher 
and  brighter  even  as  they  dropped  it  from  their  failing 
hands.  Our  hope  is  that  so  long  as  words  graven  in 
bronze  may  resist  the  assaults  of  time,  the  spirit  of  cour- 
age and  devotion  which  these  dead  men  showed  may 
flourish  not  only  in  hours  of  crisis  but  in  the  easy  flowing 
days  of  peace  in  the  purpose  and  in  the  performance  of  those 
who  are  to  cultivate  the  field  in  which  they  once  labored. 

But  at  least  equally  with  our  regard  to  coming  gener- 
ations of  Evening  Sun  workers,  we  put  up  this  tablet  as  an 
expression  of  ourselves  and  our  feeling  as  respects  the 
deaths  of  these  three  and  especially  as  regards  the  vicar- 
ious character  thereof.  The  soldiers  who  went  forth  in 
this  war  to  fight  and  die,  went  in  the  eye  of  history  and  in 
the  whole  broad  scheme  of  things  as  the  representatives  of 
the  American  people,  the  spokesmen,  as  it  were,  of  the 
dedication  that  was  in  every  heart.  These  three  seem  to 
us  in  a  peculiar  way  to  stand  as  our  representatives,  as  the 
champions  of  this  unit  of  endeavor  to  which  we  belong. 


482  One  Who  Gave  His  Life 

We  cannot  but  feel  that  we  have  a  share  in  their  death,  a 
share  both  in  its  tragedy  and  in  its  glory,  and  if  their  death, 
while  consigning  them  to  the  shades,  has  led  us  into  a  more 
blessed  life  of  peace  and  freedom,  there  is  therefore  the 
strongest  reason  why  we  should  unify  ourselves  in  heart  and 
mind  with  them  and  with  their  consecration  of  themselves. 

But  if  we  thus  make  their  death  in  part  our  own,  so 
would  we  also  give  them  a  part  of  our  lives.  We  firmly 
purpose  that  they  shall  live  in  us  and  through  us  in  mem- 
ory and  in  inspiration.  They  are  not  altogether  dead 
even  in  the  earthly  sense.  They  not  only  live  in  gratitude 
and  honor  but  they  shall  live  in  guidance,  in  force,  in  the 
vitalization  of  good  and  right  as  active  principles  of  life. 
We  dedicate  this  monument  to  the  identification  of  our- 
selves with  them  in  spirit. 

Not  with  idle  grief,  not  with  vain  repining  may  their 
names  be  cherished  but  with  serene  trust  that  their  sacri- 
fice already  is  having  its  reward  in  the  new  life  that 
they  have  entered,  and  with  cheery  confidence  that  even  in 
the  world  they  have  left  behind,  flower  and  fruit  will  grow 
out  of  the  seeds  they  have  planted. 

I  will  not  say  Goodby.  These  men  remain  with  us 
more  than  ever  the  companions  of  our  inmost  spirits.  I 
will  not  wish  them  rest.  I  cannot  think  of  these  ardent 
souls  as  dreaming  through  eternity  even  in  visions  of  light 
or  robed  in  clouds  of  glory.  I  will  wish  them  effort  and 
progress,  upward  struggle  such  as  they  delighted  in  while 
they  were  here.  What  finer  prospect  can  I  entertain 
to-day,  what  finer  hope  can  I  offer  to  those  who  loved  and 
admired  them,  than  that  somewhere  in  the  dim  future, 
somewhere  in  the  wide  spaces  of  the  ethereal  universe  we 
may  find  them,  transfigured  in  sublime  enterprise,  once 
again  showing  us  the  way  and  leading  us  on? 


INDEX 


Adams,  Captain  L.  M.  C,  223,  441, 
461,  468-470 

Adamson,  Robert,  152,  309 

Aisne,  455,  459 

Alabamans,  364,  451 

Alexander,  Dr.  Eben,  86,  108,  113 

Algerians,  451 

Alpha  Theta  Phi,  103 

Alsace,  Front,  312 

American  Soldier,  the,  253,  269, 
277.  299-  306,  307,  310,  313,  316, 
330.  331-  334.  336,  348,  350.  351. 
353-356;  358,  366,  371,  381,  390- 
392;  402,  411,  413,  414,  416,  421, 
422,  431-437;  439-441;  451,  452, 
471 

Amiens,  357 

Andrew  family,  maternal  an- 
cestors of  Q.  S.  Mills,  15,  16,  24 

Association  of  City  Hall  Reporters, 
167,  476 

Ayres,  Lieutenant  Quincy  C,  400 


B 


Baccarat,  340,  342,  404 
Badonviller,  330-333;  340.  341,  342, 

347,  351.  353,  357,  364,  370,  375, 

385,388,415,417 
Baker,  Sjcretary  of  War,  314,  334 
Baltic,  the,  230,  331,  236,  237,  238, 

240,  251 
Barber  in  hip  boots,  294 
Baskerville,  Dr.  Charles,  113 
Bastile  Day,  448 

Battle,  Dr.  Kemp  Plummer,  74,  76 
Bennett,  Colonel  Ernest  R.,  222 
Benoit,  Maire  and  Wife,  341 
Blue  Devils,  293,  451 
"Blue  Ridge,  Footing  It   Through 

the,"  81,  90,  92-102 
Boche  vulnerability,  291,  292 
Brigade,  84th,  225 


Bringle,  of  Salisbury,  N.  C,  428 
Browne,  Chaplain  Duncan,  479 
Bryan,  W.  J.,  140,  159,  160 
Bum,  the  mascot  of  Company  G, 
326,  327,  384,  416,  437,  453,  466 
Buncombe  County  Club,  104 


Cambrai,  313 

Camp  Attila,  443 

Camp  Leon  Springs,  471 

Camps,  3-5,  426 

Campbell,  Douglas,  407 

Candy,  Soldiers'  craving  for,  318, 

319,  348.  359.  364.  378,  379,  392, 

394 
Casey,  Captain,  399 
Censoring  men's  letters,  253,   265, 

276-278;  289,  313,  315,  349,  355, 

356,  381,  392,435.444 
Chalons,  426,  443,  450,  452,  454 
Champagne,  424,  426,  441,  443,  469, 

476 
Changis,  454,  465 
Chapel  Hill,  N.  C,  67,  70,  85-87; 

92,  108,  474 
Charlotte  Observer,  73,  81,  95,  no, 

112,  113,  114,  117,  119,  146 
Chiteau- Thierry,  85,  443,  444,  455, 

459,  464,  465,  466, 472, 476 
Chaumont,  267,  468 
City  Hall,  148,   150,  153  154,  158, 

164,  177,  285,  302,  309,  344,  350, 

466,  471,  476 
Civil  War,  influence  on  Q.  S.  Mills's 

family,  29,  30,  41 
Coan,  Philip,  168,  199-203;  475 
Cole,  Robert,  435,  436 
Conde-en-Brie,  459 
Coolus,  454 
Cooper,  Charles  P.,  114,  115,  116, 

152,  153 
Corey,  Herbert,  350,  351 
Courtisols,  424,  426 


483 


484 


Index 


Cowan,  Mrs.  Mary  Elizabeth  Mills, 

42,48-51:414,415 
Crawford,  Lieut.  Conrad,  478,  481 
Croix  Rouge  Farm,  456,  457,  458, 

464,  465,  471 


D 


Davidson  College,  35 

Delanne,  Madame  Victorine,  301, 

319.  320,  382,  404 
Democracy,  American,  French  and 

English,  405,  406 
Dialectic  Society,  70,  71 
Division,  the  Twenty-sixth,  Yankee 

or  New  England,  455 
Division,  the  Twenty-seventh,  New 

York,  220 
Doohan,  John,  in,  112,  135 
Domremy,  397-399 
Dowd,      Mrs.      Frances     Tunstall, 

59-60 


E 


Edgar,  Lieutenant  Stuart  Emmet, 
478,  481 

Editorials,  examples  of  Q.  S.  M.'s 
in  The  Evening  Sun,  169,  170, 
171,  172,  175,  176,  178,  180,  181, 
182,  183,  185,  186,  187,  189,  190, 
192,  193,  195,  196,  197,  198,  207, 
208 

Eiffel  Tower,  the,  454 

English  women  and  girls,  247,  257, 

^  258,  265 

Epieds,  455,  456,  459.  467-  474.  478, 
480 

Evening  Sun,  The,  Editorial  on  the 
death  of  Q.  S.  M.,  3;  47,  74,  75, 
114,  116,  131,  135,  146,  148,  151, 
154,  155,  159.  160,  162,  164,  165, 
168,  171,  172,  173.  175.  185,  188, 
199,  206,  211,  216,  232,  278,  285, 
308,  314,  334,  383,  424,  435,  459. 
471,  473.  474.  476,  479,481 

Eyre,  Lincoln,  350 


F  Company,  i68th  Iowa  Regiment 

of  Infantry,  457 
Fevre  Hotel,  301,  310,  320,  369,  380 
Fismes,  458 
Foch,  General,  408,  420,  444,  446, 

452, 460 


F6ret-de-Ffere,  455,  456 

Forney,  member  of  G    Company, 

432 
France,  La,  Channel  steamer,  261 
France,  landscape  and  sundry  as- 
pects of,  272,  273,  274,  275,  276, 
283,  284,  305,  306,  307,  320,  325, 
346,  369,  380,  387,  389,  395,  396, 
397.423.431.  435 
France,  wonderful  roads  of,  346 
French    forest    conservation,    322, 

323,414 
French  fuel  shortage,  269,  270,  286, 

287,  297,  313,  340,  387,  434 
French  soldiers,   tine   physique  of, 

262,  274,  290,  326 
French   soldiers    and  people,   262, 

27:?>,  274,  297-299;  320-325;  329, 

349.  381,  382,  399.  4".  434.  435 
French  women  and  children,  276, 

309.  310,  326,  :i33,  338,  375,  412, 

426,  427 
French  women  at  work,  274,  325, 

423 


G  Company,  i68th  Iowa  Regiment 
of  Infantry,  223,  267,  295,  304, 
329.  330,  350,  359-364;  366,  367, 
406,  413,  415,  416,  418,  419,  425, 
457,  464,  467,  469,  472 

Garden  City,  221 

Gareissen,  Mrs.  Mabel  Fonda,  345, 

472-473 
Gay,  Alfred,  249,  250 
Gaynor,  William  J.,  148,  150,  151- 

153;  344 
German-American  press,  424,  425, 

426 
German  desertions,  402,  403 
German  intrigue,  344 
German   prisoners,   259,   265,   293, 

452 
Globe,  the,  N.  Y.,  302,  351 
Golden  Fleece,  91,  102 
Gondrecourt    Training    School    for 

officers,  301,   345,  359,  385.386 
Gouraud,  General,  424,  429,  439, 

476 
Governors  Island,   211,  228,  230, 

279, 286, 409 
Graham,  Edward  Kidder,   74,   75, 

179,  180 
Gramcr,  William  A.,  280,  283,  295, 

302,  304,  335,  351,  352,  355.  359. 

378.  388 


Index 


485 


Grave  of  Q.  S.  Mills,  459,  472,  473 
Graves,  Louis,  113 
Graves,  Ralph,  113 
Grcsham,  Rrv.  LeRoy,  113 
Grose,  Henry  S.,  467,  468 


H 


H  Company,  i68th  Iowa  Regiment 

of  Infantrv',  468,  469 
Hambidge,  Charles  B.,  477 
Hancock,  member  of  G  Company, 

432 
Hartman,  of  Co.  G,  395 
Hartzell,  Serqcant  Chester  R.,  459 
Haute  Marne,  267,  284,  468 
Havre,  2fSr 

Hawley,  \A 'alter  L.,  148 
Herald,  The  N.  Y.,  270,  291,  384 
"Heritage,  The  Price  of  Our,"  342 
Hill  212,  458 
Hobbs,  "  Old  Bill,"  cook  for  Co.  G, 

354 
Hoboken,  151.  225 
Hoffman,  Dr.  S.  Wallace,  77,  82-92; 

93,  94,  102,  408,  470 
Hughes,  Harvey  Hatcher,   73,   77, 

78,  85,  90,  102,  308 


I 


Iowa,  222,  268,  277,  358,  368,  -571, 

45« 
Iowa  officials  inspect  i68th,  223 
Iowa,  Third  National  Guard  Re?,i- 

mcnt  of,  222 
Iowa  tobacco  gift?,  283 
lowans,  246,  3.^  I   ,^43 
Iredell  Blues,  42 
Iredell  Count\-,  North  Carolina,  9, 

10,  T3,  15,  17,  iS,  20,  22,  24,  2,5, 

28,  38,  40,  41.  48,  467 


Jeanmesnil,  347 

Joan  of  Arc,  321,  352,  398,  399,  400, 
411 


K 


K  Company  of  the  i68t]i  Regiment , 

345 
Katzenstein ,  Charles,  136,  138 
Ker-Avor,  ("a'pp,  .-J41,  347,  372 
Kocster,  Philii>,  247,  248,  516,  452 


"  Land  of  the  Sky,"  93 

Landmark,  The  Statesville,  42,  84, 

Langres,  267,  270,  271,  272,  299,  301 
Lamont,  Hammond,  113 
Lazenby,  Miss  l.aura,  59-61 
Lindquist,  of  Co.  G,  3^0,  361,  363 
Liverpool,  251 
Logan,  S.  R.,  y:^,  77-82;  90,  93,  94, 

97,  99,  102,  104,  136,  137 
Lorraine,  Cross  of,  352,  353,  402 
Lorraine  Front,  309,  312,  340,  341, 

351,  357,  358,  370,  412,  417,  420, 

470,  476 
Luby,  James,  308,  330,  336,  344, 

401,  417,  479-482 
Lufbery,  Raoul,  407 
Lyon,  C.  C,  350 


M 


Mails  fiom  U.  wS.  A.,  239,  251,  271, 
278,  2<S5,  286,  289,  290,  303,  304, 
305,  307,  308,  319,  337,  357,  358, 
378,  396,  410,  424,  454 

McAlamey,  R.  E.,  113 

McAneny,  George,  i6i,  178,  206 

McClellan,  George  B.,  148 

McCormick,  Lieutenant  Scott,  344, 
345 

Mel',] wees.  The,  286 

McHenry,  Captain  Harry  C,  342 

McKee  family,  maternal  ancestors 
of  Q.  S.  Mills,  14,  16,  17,  20,  24- 
29 

McKelway,  Rev.  A.  J.,  20,  21 

McKnight  famih-,  maternal  an- 
cestors of  Q.  S.  Mills,  21,  2i,  27 

Malgrejean,  401 

Marne,  297,  420,  429 

Marquis,  Don,  281 

MaT-tin,  Don,  384 

Martin,  vSamuel  L.,  163-164 

Martyrs'  Cemeteiy,  459 

Meaux,  454,  465 

Menoher,  General  Charles  T.,  476 

Mersey,  the,  251 

Miller,  Dr.  Grier,  289 

Miller,  Julian  S.,  473 

Miller,  Captain  T.,  210 

Millikiri,  Lieutenant,  290,  317 

Mills,  Camp,  221,  222,  228,  232 

Mills  fanily,  paternal  ancestors  of 
O.  S.  Mills,  7,  8,  9,  10,  24,  40,  41, 
42,  43 


486 


Index 


Mills,    Henry    Mansfield,   paternal 

grandfather  of  Q.  S.  Mills,  40,  42; 

his  home  Q.  S.  M.'s  playground, 

49-56 
Mills,  Miss  Nannie  Williams,  42, 

early  recollections  cf  Q.  S.  Mills, 

51-54 

Mills,  Mrs.  Nannie  Sharpe,  mother 
of  Q.  S.  Mills,  II,  18,  19,  27,  28- 
37,  42,  43,  47,  57-59,  65,  66,  215, 
338,  339,  369,  427,  436 

Mills,  Quincy  Sharpe,  Evening  Sun 
on  death  of,  3 ;  his  antecedents 
and  sacrifice,  4-7;  Tar  Heel  edi- 
torial, 19-20;  ancestral  influences, 
28,  37-39;  birth  and  early  years, 
43-44;  changes  of  home,  45,  46; 
at  school,  46,  47;  back  in  Statcs- 
ville,  47;  musical  initiation,  47; 
two  aunts'  recollections,  48-54 ;  his 
boyhood  playground  as  he  saw  it, 
55,  56;  love  of  soldiering,  of  books, 
politics  and  pets,  56-58;  no  West 
Point  ambitions,  56;  a  school 
clash,  59;  congenial  teachers,  59- 
61 ;  preparations  for  college,  61, 
62;  serious  typhoid  attack,  62; 
a  Florida  romance,  62,  63;  early 
peculiarities  of  taste,  63-65;  the 
note  of  duty,  65,  66;  effects  of 
typhoid  attack,  67;  entrance  to 
University  of  North  Carolina,  67; 
success  in  college,  69;  summed  up 
in  Yackety-Yack,  70;  contribu- 
tions to  college  publications,  68, 
69,  70,  72,  y^,  77;  "One  of  the 
boys,"  77;  sketched  by  S.  R. 
Logan,  78-82;  reminiscences  of 
S.  Wallace  Hoffman,  82-92;  ath- 
letics, 92;  "Footing  It  Through 
the  Blue  Ridge,"  92-102;  anti- 
Frat  crusade,  102,  103,  104;  acti- 
vities at  college,  104-109;  gradua- 
tion, 108;  plans  in  life,  no;  goes 
to  New  York,  no;  former  stays 
there,  in;  finds  quarters,  no, 
in;  successful  job  hunting,  112, 
1 13;  landing  on  Evening  Sun,  1 14; 
early  work  and  anxieties,  115- 
117;  letters  home,  117  et  seq.; 
theatres,  operas,  etc.,  1 18-127; 
pays  debts  in  Statesville,  117; 
speech  at  Alumni  Dinner,  118; 
musical  and  dramatic  criticism, 
1 19-127;  moral  standard  in  Art, 
123,  127;  not  Puritanical,  124; 
books  and  views  of  books,  127- 


131;  other  recreations,  131-132; 
love  for  cats  and  other  animals, 
133-134;  holidays  far  from  home, 
134-136;  father's  illness,  137; 
love  of  family  and  home,  137; 
new  boarding  house,  138 ;  bachelor 
housekeeping,  138,  139;  seeking 
political  anchorage,  140;  re- 
united with  parents  in  New  York, 
141;  search  for  religious  system, 
141;  quaint  marriage  prospectus, 
143;  pays  last  of  coUegedebts,  146, 
147;  progress  on  Evening  Sun,  146 
et  seq.;  work  on  Hudson-Fulton 
celebration,  148-150;  relations 
with  Mayor  Gaynor,  150-152; 
City  Hall  and  local  politics,  148- 
153;  Albany  and  other  political 
correspondence,  152,  153;  report- 
ing Roosevelt,  153,  155-158,  160; 
the  Colonel's  congratulations, 
158;  at  National  Conventions, 
158,  159;  encounter  with  W.  J. 
Bryan,  159;  Sulzer  impeachment, 
160;  Mitchel  Mayoralty  cam- 
paign, 161;  New  Orleans  trip  and 
big  news  beat,  161,  162;  in  a 
cyclone,  162;  relations  with 
Mayor  Mitchel,  162-165;  memoir 
by  Samuel  L.  Martin,  163-164; 
family  and  personal  life,  165-168; 
early  volunteer  editorials,  "The 
Great  Vibrator,"  169;  "Pithe- 
kophagi,"  171;  various  topics 
handled,  172,  173;  becomes  an 
editorial  writer,  173, 174;  prepara- 
tory reading  and  study,  174,  175; 
hundred  word  editorials,  175; 
various  subjects  and  styles,  175- 
198;  sulky  politicians,  177;  in- 
terests and  opinions,  1 79-181, 
preparedness,  183-189,  191-194; 
early  sympathy  with  Belgium  and 
France,  184;  the  Great  War,  185, 
189,  190;  labor  selfishness,  182, 
190;  Mexican  trouble,  185;  dis- 
loyalty, 194-196;  Joffro  and 
Viviani,  196-198;  last  editorial. 
197;  paragraphing,  198;  study  b / 
Philip  Coan,  199-203;  training 
for  a  foreseen  emergency,  204; 
first  Plattsburg  encampment, 
205-207;  second,  209-210;  drilling 
in  New  York,  211;  war  volunteer, 
211;  Officer's  Training  Camp, 
211-219;  relations  with  company 
commander,  214-217,  218,  219; 


Index 


487 


Mills,  Quincy  Sharpe — Continued 
conscientious  scruples,  213,  217- 
219;  commissioned  2nd  Lieuten- 
ant, 219;  en^jagement  to  marry, 
220;     Masonic     interests,     220; 
ordered    to  Camp     Up  ion,    220; 
transferred  to  Mincola,  220;  sent 
to  National  Guard  at  Camp  Mills 
as  extra  officer,  221 ;  temporary  as- 
signment to  the  69th,  New  York, 
221;   life   at   Garden   City,   221; 
final  attachment  to  the  x68th  In- 
fantry (Third  National  Guard  of 
Iowa),  222;  work  training  Com- 
pany   G,    223;    false    start    for 
France,  224;  experiences  on  the 
President   Grant,   225-228;    back 
in  New  York,  228;  last  days  at 
home,  229,  230;  sails  for  Europe 
on  the  Baltic,  230;  safe  arrival, 
231 ;    physique   and    personality, 
231-237;  letters  at  sea  and  from 
England,  238-260;  Baltic's  crew 
and    passengers,    240-244;    per- 
sonal exf>eriences  on  board,  244- 
251 ;  soldier's  letters  as  seen  by 
the  censor,  253;  English  impres- 
sions, 256-259;  German  prisoners, 
259-260;  letters  from  France,  261 
et  seq.;    arrival   at    Havre,   261; 
training  at  Rest  Camp  No.   2, 
261-266;  contrast  of  British  and 
U.    S.    mails,   264;    at   Fort   de 
Peigney,  266-300;   Christmas  in 
medieval  surroundings,  267,  272, 
275.  279;  in  charge  of  50  men, 
267;    practice    work,    280,    281 ; 
again  the  cat,  282,  289;  timely 
tobacoo  from  a  friend,  283;  fun 
buying  shoes,  287;  and  New  Year 
cards,  288;  absorbing  duties,  290; 
optimism  as  to  Russia,  291;  the 
German  mind,  291-293;  soldiers 
of  all  sorts,  293 ;  peace  aspirations, 
295;  Jeanne  d'Arc    medal,  296; 
feeding  well,  297;  cheap  money, 
297,  298;  winning  the  Poilu,  298, 
299;  Y.  M.  C.  A.  charmers,  299, 
300;  commanding  Co.  G  pro  tem, 
301;  billeted  in  Hotel  F^vre,  St. 
Ciergues,    303-329;    the    trench 
helmet  and  gas  masks,  310,  31 1; 
prospects  of  the  War,  312;  light 
wines    and    beer,    315,    316;    at 
Thi&tre  des  Poilus,  324;  sundry 
photos,    323,     328;     experiences 
under  fire  at  Badonvillcr,  330- 


334,  340.  342,  343.  346.  347.  349" 
351.  35«-3(>4.  365.  366,  367,  368, 
375-377;    the    American    soldier, 
raider,  330;  battalion  staff  service, 
331 ;  shells  and  gas,  331-334;  con- 
tempt for  slackers,  338;  writing 
in  a  gunpit,  342;  effects  of  bom- 
bardment, 343-344;  orticer's  pay, 
347;  morals  of  American  soldier, 
348;  newspaper  visit  under  heavy 
fire,    350-352;    sundry    kinds   of 
shells,   353,   354;   tribute  to  the 
army  mule,  354;  American  sol- 
dier s  traits,  356;  trench  reports, 
359~3(>4;  in  combat  position,  366; 
acute  discomfort,  368;   Ireland's 
mistake,    370;    National   against 
State  commissions,  370-371 ;  more 
anti-slacker  wrath,  373,  374;  non- 
combatants  under  fire,  375-376; 
cats     of     No  Man's-Land,    377; 
package  week,  tobacco  and  candy, 
2)7^1  379;  Swiss  huts  in  a  hemlock 
forest,  an  ancient  farmhouse,  fun 
with    a    graphophone,    380-383; 
the  company  mascot  deserts,  384; 
at    Officers'    School    at    Gondre- 
court,  385-38«,  392,  394,  395.4^4. 
407;   gargoyles   at    Nancy,    387; 
second  hitch  in  the  trenches,  388, 
392;  souvenirs,  393;  pilgrimage  to 
Domremy,     397-399;     regaining 
weight  after  trench  loss,  399,  400; 
trench   order,   401;   as   to   Huns 
bombing   New   York,   401,   402; 
British  humor,  405,  406;  back  to 
company  G,  406;  letters  to  Alice 
Hale  Morris,  409-414;  to   Mrs. 
Cowan,    414-415;    more    trench 
work,  416;  flowers  from  the  brink, 
417;  incidents  of  the  fight,  418- 
420;  march  to  the   Moselle   and 
the  Marne,  420;  no  fear  of  Ger- 
man success,  419,  420,  421;  en- 
thusiastic as  to  American  army, 
422;  a  problem  solved,  423;  rest- 
ing at  Courtisols,  424;  again  on 
the  march,  426;  puzzle  of  letter 
dates,  430;  praise  again  for  Ameri- 
can troops,  432;  their  foibles,  433; 
the   liquor   question,   434;    Rest 
camp,  436;  from  the  battle  field, 
439;    new   area  of   action,   441; 
"Missing  in  action,"  443;  vain 
hiding  of  danger,  443;  witnessing 
the    German    Gettysburg,    444, 
445;  details  of  Champagne  vie- 


488 


Index 


Mills,  Quincy  vSharpe — Continued 
tory,  446-454;  wonderful  French 
foreknowledge,  447;  personal 
experiences,  449,  450;  to  be  pro- 
moted, 454-455;  a  weird  night 
ride,  455;  arrival  in  Bois  de  Fere, 
conditions,  there,  455-457;  seek- 
ing cover  for  men  is  struck  by 
shell  fragment  and  killed,  457; 
first  interment  of  body,  458,  459; 
War  Department  news  as  to  his 
fate,  459;  farewell  letter,  461-463; 
letters  of  sympathy  to  parents, 
463-47 1 ;  newspaper  apprecia- 
tions, 473-477;  memorial  tablet 
of  The  Evening  Sun,  478;  address 
of  dedication,  479-482 

Mills,  Thomas  Millard,  father  of 
Q.  S.  Mills,  41-43,  137.  138,  141. 
403,  413,  424,  425,  468 

Mineola,  L.  I.,  220 

Mitchel,  John  Purroy,  148,  161, 
162,  163,  164,  165,  177,  205,  207, 
216,  217,  309,  372,  438 

Montreal,  209 

Morn  Hill  Rest  Camp,  255 

Morris,  Alice  Hale,  305,  409 

Morris,  Mrs.  John,  329,  409 

Morris,  Mr.  John,  409 

Moselle,  420 

Mule,  the  Army,  354 

N 

Nancy,  340,  387,  395 
Naulin,  General,  439 
Nelson,  Lieutenant   Oscar  B.,  273, 

279,  290,  311,  312,  317,  318,  360, 

379.  392,  465 
Nestles,  458 
Neufmaisons,  341,  347 
Nice,  339 
North  Carolina,  7,  8,  9,  10,  13,  17, 

18,  20,  22,  25,  36,  43,  48,  61,  62, 

63,  81,428 

O 

Oak  Ridge  Preparatory  School,  61, 

62,  107 
Osier,  of  Co.  G,  401 
Ourcq,  458,  472,  476 
Outlook  article  by  Q.  S.  M.,  206 


Paper  bombardments,  437 
Paris,  270,  282,  312,  339,  350,  388, 
420,  445,  446.  454.  472 


Peaisall,  Lieutenant  Frank  S.,  223, 

290,  317,  361,  401.  454.  457.  458, 

461,  466,  471,  472 
Peigney,  Fort  de,  261,  267-269;  271, 

278 
Pershing,  General  John  J.,  222,  314, 

348 
Pexonne,  340,  341,  347 
Phi  Beta  Kappa,  51,  70,  103,  108 
Pierce,  Albert  W.,  344,  466,  471 
Pierce,  Col.  Charles  C,  459 
Plantation  Life  in  the  6o's,  30-34 
Plattsburg    Training    Camps,    92, 
109,  204,  205-207;  209,  210, 211- 
219;  222,  223,  227,  261,  267,  286, 
344.  386,  387,  393,  394,  398,  404, 
408,  469 
Poetry,  verses  by  Q.  S.  Mills,  63, 
68,  69,  70,  71,  72,  77,  105,  106, 
107,  109,  144,  145,  166,  442 
Post,  the  Quincy  Sharpe  Mills,  478 
Prendergast,   Comptroller   William 

A.,  162,  206 
President    Grant,    steamship,    225, 

228,  230,  231,  237,  238,  239 
Prose  skits  in  college,  'J2-'J2> 

Q 

Q.  S.  M.,  verses  to,  by  Philip  Coan, 

475 

R 

"Raid,  The  First,"  331 

Rainbow,  42nd  Division,  221,  222, 

341,  417,  424,  439,  459,  473,  475, 

476 
Red  Cross,  394,  436,  460 
Regiment,  165th  (Old  Sixty-Ninth 

of  New  York  City),  221,  451 
Regiment,    167th    (Of    Alabama), 

451,458,467 
Regiment,    i68th  (Of  Iowa),    222- 

224,  228,  230,  232,  277,  303,  304, 

324,  340,  341,  342,  344,  345,  347, 

351,  357,  365,  403.  417.  418.  420. 

421,  424,  425,  426,  439,  443,  454, 

456-458,  461,  463,  469,  472 
Reick,  William  C,  162 
Reportorial  work,  example  of  Q.  S. 

Mills  in  Evening  Sun,  156 
Rest  Camp  No.  2,  261 
Rheims,  427,  452,  467 
Richmond  Times-Despatch,  73 
Rimaucourt,  267 
Robb,  Chaplain  Winfred  E.,  342, 

425,  459,  464 
Robcioniaii;  The,  iio 


Index 


489 


Roosevelt,  Theodore,  153,  155,  156, 
157.  i5».  159,  160,  169,  170,  171, 
201,  312,  4()0 

Rubcl,  LiL-utcnant  Solomon  R.,  223, 
270,  290,  317,  323,  324,  338,  342, 
345,  457,  458,  460,  464,  466,  472, 

Russian  views,  262,  291,  328 


St.  Amand,  420 

St.   Ciergues,   301,   303,   304,   335, 

340,  364,  369,  380,  411 
St.  Clair,  David  F.,  470 
Saturday  Evening  Post,  330,  340 
School,    First    Army    Corps,    385, 

386,  388,  393,  394,  401 
Scotch-Irish  in  North  Carolina,  10, 

II,  12,  16,  17,  18,  20-24;  28,  35, 

37,38 
Scott,  Sergeant  Will,  366,  367,  452, 

467 
Segonne,  General,  340 
Sergy,  458 

Seringes-et-Nestles,  459 
Sharpe  family,  maternal  ancestors 

of  Q.  S.  Mills,  II,  12,  13,  14,  15, 

16,  28 
Sharpe,  Leander  Quincy,  maternal 

grandfather  of  Q.  S.  Mills,  15,  28, 

29,  35-37 
Sharpe,   Mary   Emmeline   McKee, 

maternal  grandmother  of  Q.   S. 

Mills,  27,  28,  29,  30,  34,  406 
Sharpe,  John  McKee,  of  N.  C,  26 
Sharpe,  John  McKee,  of  Texas,  474 
Sharpe,  Quincy,  of  Texas,  400 
Sharpe,  Mrs.  S.  A.,  57 
Simonds,  Frank  H.,  172,  173,  383, 

408,  428 
Skinner,  of  Co.  G,  359,  360,  361,  364 
Smith,  George  McLeod,  162,  479 
Smoke  and  smokers,  279,  283,  302, 

314.  327,  335,  337,  338,  345,  359, 

378,  379,  388,  394 
Soissons,  443,  467 
Southampton,  261 
South  Boston,  Va.,  45,  46,  395 
Spirit  of  the  French,  262,  273,  274, 

329,  349,  399,411.469 
Springer,  Captain,  351 
Stanley,    Major   Claude    M.,    224, 

228,  267,  457,  464 
Stars  and  Stripes,  314 
Statesville,  N.  C,  15,  16,  18,  19,  20, 

22.  30,  31,  35,  37,  40,  41.  4^  4;., 


45,  46,  47,  48,  51,  56,  59,  61,  64, 
66,  82,  88,  132,  133,  146,  147,  164, 
278,  285,  i22,  392,  401,  428 

Stcller,  Captain,  223,  290,  317,  359, 

367,  399 
Stover,  Charles  B.,  i6i,  162 
Suippes,  426,  450 

Sulzer,  Governor  William,  160,  171 
Sun,  The,  113,  114,  163,  477 
Sun  Tobacco  Fund,  279,  283 
Sykes,  Lieutenant,  of  Charlotte,  N. 

C,  284 


Taft,  President,  140,  155,  195 

Tar  Heel,  The,  19,  70,  71,  73,  74,  85, 

89,  103 
Thedtre  des  Poilus,  324,  325,  329 
Times,  The,  N.  Y.,  113,  115 
Tinley,  Colonel  Matthew  A.,  463 
Toul,  404,  408 
Trenches,  order  to,  401 
Trench  rats  and  cats,  349,  368,  377, 

391 
Trench  reports,  359-364 
Tribioie,  The,  Chicago,  270,  291 
Tribune,  The,  N.  Y.,  114,  173 
Turenne  Barracks,  267 


U 


United  Press,  350 

University  of  North  Carolina,  19, 
20,  62,  64,  67,  74,  76,  85,  86,  87, 
135,  136,  147,  179,  224,  386 

University  of  N.  C.  Alumni,  117, 
118 

University  of  N .  C.  Magazine,  67, 
70,    73,   86,    103,    106 

University  of  N.  C.  Press  Associa- 
tion, 70,  73 

Upton,  Camp,  220 


V 


V^erdun,  261,  391,  427,  445 
Vesle,  the,  458 

Vincent,  Robert  W.,  112,  113 
Vosges,  the,  301,  385 

W 

Walker,  James  Blaine,  477 
IV a d  Rose,  The,  425 


490 


Index 


Willard,  Dr. ,  289 

Williams,  Dr.   Henry  Horace,   71, 

74,  76,  108,  165 
Williams,  Jesse  Lynch,  113 
Williams,  Senator  John  Sharp,  18, 

19,  20 
Wilson,  President,  35,  155,  160,  291, 

309,  437 
Wimbledon,  Rest  Camp,  255 
Winchester,  251 
Winchester  Cathedral.  259,  404 


Wood,  General  Leonard,  312 
World,  N.  Y.,  350 

Y 

Yackety-Yack,   63,    70,   71,  73,  78, 

103,  104,  109 
Y.  M.  C.  A.,  299,  300,  364,381,436, 

468 
Younkin,  Captain  Frank  B.,  223, 

290,  317,  359-364;  367,  399.  401, 

457.  464.  465.  472 


